


The Control of Tension

by qwanderer



Series: Color (Green) and Pattern (Measured) [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Archery, M/M, Math, Medicine, Oh yeah I guess there's some het kissing too, Present Tense, how'd that get in there, oops this last chapter is kinda explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-30
Updated: 2012-11-21
Packaged: 2017-11-15 08:52:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/525481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has coping mechanisms; they're not meant to become our lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unstrung

Most archers, when accuracy is critical, when making a shot is life and death, use a compound bow. The draw is easier, can be held longer with less effort. The accuracy is superior, and the bow itself more compact than a recurve. 

Clint, of course, can use both, but he prefers the more basic recurve. If people ask him why, he tends to mutter about changing strings and maintenance in the field, and the dependability of his favorite bow.

But really, it's all about the feel of the bow. He loves the tension of the string resting behind his curled fingers, where he can feel the force of the thing, like a living creature waiting to pounce.

When Clint trains, he holds his draw as long as he can. He holds his draw until he can't stop his arms from shaking, and then he stops his arms from shaking, and looses the arrow.

Sometimes these shots don't hit perfectly where he intends to put them. That's what happens when you push yourself.

* * *

Natasha knows and trusts Clint, knows that despite his jokes, the archer values human life and companionship over any tool. But even so, sometimes she wonders if Clint has more passion for that bow of his than he allows himself to have for any person.

Nock. Draw. Aim. Loose.

Nock. Draw. Aim. Loose.

Natasha watches Clint from the back of the range. He always takes training seriously, but this is something else. It's like he's driven, like he's searching for something.

Nock. Draw.

"You're in perfect practice," she tells him. "It's not going to help anything if you exhaust yourself."

"So, this isn't for practice. This is for fun." 

Aim. Loose.

"Yeah, you look like you're having a barrel of monkeys."

Clint recognizes the words; he's used them on her often enough when she's taking work too seriously and not giving herself a break. He stops and looks down at the bow in his hands. The curve of the thing, like muscles, full of potential power. The thick string, stretched straight from arm to arm.

It's just a tool; it can't feel resentment or neglect. 

Still, Clint struggles to put it down.

He unstrings it, folds in the arms and puts it back in its case. He presses down the latches with his thumbs until they click. He lifts his eyes to Tasha's face, seeing a pointed look overlying concern. 

"So, fun. How's that supposed to work?"

He conjures a smile from somewhere, to reassure her, and he can tell from the shine in her eyes that it's worked, as he agrees to go on some outing or other with her and Steve.

Inside, he still feels out of control. Has since he woke up in the Helicarrier. He just wants to feel like he has a handle on some part of his life.

When he unstrings his bow it feels like letting go, and letting go feels like drowning.

* * *

Bruce is usually okay when he's working in the labs, but Tony is being particularly irritating today. Bruce's head is buzzing with anger; half the day's data needs to be thrown out because _someone_ changed the settings on his equipment without changing them back. Bruce becomes conscious of his fists, tightly curled around the useless printouts, and he knows he needs to get away from here right now.

Bruce opens his hands. He walks to the stairs, and he counts each step, willing his brain to latch onto the numbers to keep afloat, to keep above the dark water that is the Other Guy churning in his mind. As he lifts his foot to the eighteenth and final step (eighteen factors to two, three and three), he's reached a level of control where he feels it's safe to step out of the stairwell and into the Avengers common area.

Thankfully it's empty. Bruce walks to the kitchen, fills the kettle with water and sets it to boil, then opens the cabinet to find a tea bag. There are twenty-eight kinds of tea (Tony keeps buying odd things; Bruce suspects it's things that he thinks Bruce will like, to entice him to stay, and that Jarvis has been spying to help pick)(no, Hulk, that's a good thing, he's trying to be nice)(twenty-eight factors to two, two and seven). Bruce picks a particularly nice decaffeinated green tea with mint, and a mug with a Celtic knot design (the knot, untwisted, would form three loops, one large and two small).

Then Tony walks out of the elevator.

"Hey, Puffer Fish. Sorry about messing with your settings, but you know how it is. I get caught up and distracted and I'm not used to working around other people."

"It's okay, really," Bruce says, and it's half true. Bruce has been expecting something like this to happen. It's not exactly a shock.

The kettle whistles, and Bruce moves to silence it, quickly but smoothly.

"Seriously, you're so chill," Tony continues, leaning on the breakfast bar. "I'd get angry, and I haven't even got the excuse of having a giant green monster inside me wanting to get out. Whatever you're taking, I want some."

"No," Bruce says, shaking his head. "You really don't."

Bruce pours the boiling water into his mug and watches tiny bubbles rise as the tea bag becomes saturated (thirty-five bubbles, which factors to five and seven).

Tony is still talking. "Like how can you just stand there and watch your water turn into tea? I can't even sit still long enough to wait for my pizza to cool."

Bruce smiles to hide his irritation. "I can see that."

"I'm starting to think you have more control than anyone knows. That everyone's afraid of you for no reason."

Bruce bites back a comment about what happened on the Helicarrier, and instead catches Tony's eye and says, "Maybe I should move out."

Tony is silent for a blessed moment, and Bruce adds honey to his tea, noting the calories per tablespoon (sixty-four, which factors to two, two, two, two, two, and two).

"What if I promise to stay out of your work area," Tony says at last.

Bruce sips tea from his spoon, and ponders his next words.

"It's not about today," he says. "It's not about the labs, or even you. It's about the fact that another incident is inevitable, and it's irresponsible of me to stay too long in such a populated area."

"That's crap," Tony replies, and Bruce looks up from his tea, to see that Tony is angry now.

"You may not trust the Hulk, but I do. He saved my life. I wouldn't be alive if not for him, so forgive me if I feel safer with you here than off somewhere playing hermit."

"Of course, you're the only person that matters," Bruce mutters. The dark water churns. He takes a breath and sips his tea.

"Okay, I'm not talking about me because this is about me. I'm saying look at the evidence. Come on, Banner. The Hulk doesn't smash unless you or someone you know is threatened. He's not the bad guy. He doesn't deserve exile, and neither do you."

"You think I don't know that?" Bruce says, and he feels the danger in his veins. "Nobody deserves this, but he _kills people, Tony. I kill people_." Bruce's heartbeat thrums through his temples. 

"Woah, okay, I like the guy, but I don't need to see him right now in my second-best kitchen." Tony holds his hands up placatingly. 

Bruce breathes in as deeply as he can, trying to focus. "Give me a four-digit number," he growls at Tony.

Tony at least knows enough to comply with that immediately. "Three thousand two hundred and fifty," he says quickly and clearly, and then he shuts up. Finally.

(Three thousand two hundred and fifty factors to two, five, five, five, and thirteen.)

Bruce breathes deeply.

His fingers curl around the warm mug of tea, and he stands, body focused on that sensation as his mind multiplies back up to check his work.

Tony clears his throat.

"I'm going back down to the labs, but could you not leave without talking to me again?" 

Tony has some remarkably good puppydog eyes when he wants to.

Bruce nods tightly, and Tony leaves.

* * *

The Avengers common floor of the tower is actually two floors. The main room is enormous; it's probably built to accommodate an accidental social visit from the Hulk with minimal damage. What Tony didn't foresee is that Bruce spends most of his time here in the kitchen, making tea. The kitchen is only one story tall and full of granite and appliances and things. An exposed staircase leads up to the floor above, where there is a sort of library with computers and other Tony toys. Bruce doesn't go up there much. When he needs quiet he goes to his own floor.

So Bruce and Clint don't cross paths much, because Clint is pretty much always either in the shooting range or crouched on the landing at the top of the staircase.

He looks down at Bruce as the scientist comes out of the stairwell and crosses to the kitchen, face full of preoccupation. He listens as the elevator dings and Tony comes out, throwing his nicknames and smart comments everywhere. He hears the sounds of built up pressure as the kettle boils and whistles, and Bruce growls. He hears the silence left when Tony retreats, and he sees Bruce carry his mug out into the gargantuan room, and settle himself with a sigh into one of the sofas. It's amazing how small this man can look when he's not staving people off, when he thinks he's alone.

This landing is Clint's spot, yes, and he likes it here, but that's not the only reason he's stayed to hear the conversation between the scientists. He would have left, in fact, if it were up to him. Clint Barton doesn't generally feel a pressing need to learn other people's personal business.

No, it's the mission.

When Tony invited the Avengers to come and live in his tower, Fury had told him and Natasha to accept. "Because," as he had said, "someone needs to keep an eye on the Hulk. And it might as well be you two." 

Clint has a soft spot for assets with problematic lives.

There's something sad about the man below him, when he thinks he's alone, when he lets go of the tension and looks around him and just sort of accepts that he's alone, that that's how things are going to be if he wants to keep from being dangerous. 

There's something sad about Bruce, when he's alone.

Like an unstrung bow.


	2. Disassembled

This is bad, Bruce thinks. This is very very bad.

"You look like you could use some help in there."

Bruce looks up to see Hawkeye standing outside the UV-flooded compartment that separates them.

"Get away from that door! This is an isolation room for what looks like biological contaminants. These people are dying. If you come in, you'll die too."

"You're in there."

"I'm the Hulk!"

Barton takes a step back from the glass, apparently understanding. Bruce breathes, returning his attention to the person on the bed in front of him.

She's barely breathing, and she's not the worst off.

Bruce searches for supplies, for equipment. But this is a villain's lair. These people were never meant to survive. There isn't enough of anything to treat them effectively. Only what would be needed, presumably, to study how effective treatments could be if administered at different points during the disease.

Signs point to a virus, and judging from the few pieces of paper evidence he's found, a new one - bred or engineered to be a weapon.

Hawkeye pops up by Bruce's shoulder. "So what do we do?"

Bruce's jaw tightens, his eyes narrow, and he clutches the edge of the bed in front of him.

"You just - you don't listen very well do you?" he rumbles at Clint.

"Nope," the archer says, totally unapologetically. He swings his bow over his head and one shoulder, presenting his hands to Bruce. "So what can I do?"

"Not a hell of a lot," Bruce says, trying to think. For a moment his anger at Clint's idiocy threatens to eclipse his vision. But he looks at the patient in front of him, remembers lessons, statistics, and he focuses on what he can do.

"We have to keep their temperatures down. Cold water and clean cloths, we've got those."

"Got it, Doc."

Clint doesn't seem to have a problem following instructions now. His movements are quick and efficient, his expression businesslike as he carries, holds, cleans whatever Bruce asks him to. There's maybe even a hint of tenderness in his eyes as he lays a fresh compress on the forehead of one of the women.

Then Natasha appears outside of the glass. Her eyes take in the work they're doing and the state of the people on the beds.

"What are you doing in there?" They all know she's talking to Clint.

"What does it look like?" Clint raises his eyebrows at her and gives her just a hint of a smile.

"It looks like a big pile of shit and you decided to step right in it." Natasha's lips press together.

"For the record I told him to stay out, and I'm telling you the same," Bruce cuts in curtly.

"You've been throwing my words back at me a lot lately," Clint says to her.

"You've been acting like I used to," Tasha says, crossing her arms and glaring at Clint. "Acting like there's nothing to live for outside of the work, outside of the next mission. You call me an idiot for that, I think I have a right to return the favor."

Clint puts down the tub of water he's been carrying and turns to face her.

"That's not what this is. I know what I've got going for me."

Bruce can't see whatever is happening on Clint's face; the reflection in the glass shows him only a quick movement of the archer's eyes that Bruce can't see the relevance of. But Natasha's eyes widen, and then she nods.

"All right. Interference on the comm channels should clear soon; the fighting's over. Tony's dismantling this guy's computers and the Captain is dealing with the prisoners. What do you two need here?"

Clint looks to Bruce.

"Any basic medical supplies would help, especially ice, painkillers, and banana bags. Antivirals are worth a shot. I need a microscope and slides. I need to get some of these samples out of here and to someone in a real lab with a real medical degree."

Bruce's voice has just a bit of that dangerous gravelly sound to it as he forces out that last sentence. He closes his eyes briefly, breathes, and gets back to work.

* * *

An hour later and there's a stack of boxes in the UV chamber, courtesy of Tony, who drops them there and picks up the samples without so much as raising his faceplate.

"Tony doesn't like bad news," Natasha explains as Bruce watches the quickly retreating armor flash red and gold.

They unpack the boxes, setting up IVs and administering medicines as soon as they're unearthed. Things are looking better.

And then the first patient dies.

There's denial first, of course. Bruce goes over all the pulse points again. He can't find the man's pulse, but his own is thundering in his ears. This should not have happened. The black water surges up, threatening to drown his mind, and he is sure he will succumb.

Someone's speaking to him.

"Bruce. Two thousand eight hundred and ninety two. Break it down for me."

(Two thousand eight hundred and ninety two factors to two, two three and) Bruce crawls his way up through the dark water, focusing on Clint and the others here who still need him, clinging to the numbers (yes, two hundred and forty-one, that's prime).

Bruce's eyes edge towards the body on the bed, but he can't let them, so he turns the other way. Clint's hand is on his shoulder. Hulk doesn't seem to object to that, so Bruce keeps his eyes trained on the archer's appendage as he fights to stay afloat.

"One more," he rasps.

"Five thousand six hundred and twenty-eight."

(Five thousand six hundred and twenty-eight factors to two, two, three, seven, and sixty-seven.)

Bruce breathes, eyes still on the hand clasped to his shoulder.

"I thought Tony was the only person stupid enough not to run when I start to turn."

The hand tightens almost imperceptibly, and then moves away. "Yeah, well." Clint gestures at the walls around them, at the glass and the UV chamber. Then he raises his eyebrows, mouth quirking. "Where would I go?"

"If you ran, you wouldn't die any faster," Bruce points out.

"Banner." Clint shakes his head, walking back to the sinks. Bruce automatically trails after. Clint takes off his gloves and scrubs his hands.

"I didn't come in here just to run away again. A lot more people would die if I did that. I'm here to stop people dying. I'm here to stop what almost just happened from happening." Clint throws a thumb in Bruce's direction.

Bruce is struck with the realization that he hadn't quite thought this through before he entered the room either. His transformation would be inevitable - if not from anger, then from the cellular damage that would result when the virus came out of its incubation period. He couldn't have stood by and watched all these people die from the far side of the glass. But he just made things more dangerous; that was exactly what he should have done.

Clint elbows Bruce in the side then, jostling the scientist out of his downward spiral of thoughts.

"You wash up too. I don't know about you but if I don't eat something soon I'm going to implode." The archer starts back to the front of the room, where the supply boxes are still lying in a tangled pile.

Tasha has gotten a chair from somewhere and is sitting on the other side of the glass, side-on to them, making a fairly successful attempt at looking unconcerned.

Clint rummages through the boxes, turning back to Bruce to half-shout his findings.

"There's apples, peanut butter, some of your favorite granola bars, oh and these little individually wrapped cheese disks. Your idea?" he asks Tasha, and when she nods, he says, "Thanks, but you know, if I'm going to die in the next day or two why couldn't you have sprung for doughnuts?"

She smiles, a small bitter twist to the expression. "The priorities were speed, convenience and protein content. You idiots didn't even put food on your supply list." Her expression turns more earnest. "Next run, whatever you want, we'll get it. Tony Stark will be your own personal glorified pizza delivery boy." She pins Bruce with her eyes as he approaches the glass and takes a granola bar. "He's probably breathing down the necks of whoever is working with those samples. It would be good to give him something helpful to do that doesn't involve attempting to learn a whole new branch of science overnight. Again."

Bruce looks down at the granola bar he's currently chewing on. It's one of those things that seem to appear around the kitchen and labs, like the teas. Tony (or Jarvis) must have remembered to include some. It makes Bruce feel better about the lack of greeting from Tony earlier.

Then Bruce realizes something else.

"How did you know these are my favorites?" he asks Clint.

Bruce sees Clint and Natasha exchange a look.

"...SHIELD is still keeping pretty close tabs on you," Clint says. "We've been assigned to constantly assess and reduce the risk of incidents."

Natasha nods agreement.

"Is that what this is," Bruce says, wilting a little. "SHIELD sends you in to reduce the risk. I'm sorry my condition put you in this position. I doubt you wanted to die in here with these people."

Clint snorts, and claps a hand on Bruce's arm. "You think I do things I don't want to just because SHIELD says jump? You must not be paying attention." He chuckles a bit, and then goes back to peeling the wax off of his tiny cheeses.

Bruce finishes his granola bar and reaches for an apple.

Why is Clint here? There's a missing element somewhere. Bruce isn't exactly feeling cheered by any of this new information, but he figures at least there's enough puzzling things to unravel just in this room to get him through almost anything.


	3. Misaligned

At some point, after they're done eating and Bruce has been sitting at the microscope for a while pondering, Cap comes to take over for Natasha because they need her help questioning the guy that did all this.

"Hello, Doctor Banner, Agent Barton," he says.

They nod, and go on with their work. Steve stands in front of the glass awkwardly. He's trying to be comforting but he clearly doesn't want to be here, and Bruce can't blame him. He can't blame Tony either. There's really nothing to be done. A body on the other side of a piece of glass is more of a taunt than a comfort.

Suddenly Bruce feels a wave of gratitude towards Clint.

As terrible as all this is, it could be much worse.

* * *

It hadn't been a difficult decision, stepping inside this room.

This is the thing about archery. There are no second thoughts. You aim, then loose.

Unlike shooting a gun, the moment of firing is a relaxation of muscles. You let go. The more quickly and completely you relax, the cleaner your shot is.

Clint isn't spending any time on the question of why he did this. The arrow is loosed. There's nothing he can do to change its path.

But more than that...a decision hasn't felt this right since...Loki. Since then, the bow has felt wrong in his hands; the moment of letting go hasn't had this perfect feel. He practiced and practiced and practiced because the closer he came to exhaustion, the more it felt like it once had.

This is the first time he's felt like he's nailed it; he can move on to the next task.

The next task is keeping Bruce Banner from destroying this place.

"So if this thing is so deadly, why aren't we sick yet?" he asks the man across from him.

"The incubation period of a biological weapon designed to infect the most possible people would logically be significant."

"Yep, no idea what you just said."

"The disease is made that way so that if we were out there, we'd be spreading it around and we'd have no idea."

"Guess there's no point hoping we haven't caught it, then."

"No," Banner says, and his forehead bunches up like he wants to say more, but he doesn't.

Clint knows angry people. Knows how to sidestep a mood by making them laugh, or tell them things they don't want to hear in the best possible way, and he usually has good enough instincts to step back before things go critical. He gauges the danger, watching Bruce.

"What are we in for, Doc?" he asks.

"Headache first, then fever. With the amount of antivirals I've been pumping into us, hopefully...well, you should be able to stay conscious; it won't hit you as hard as some of these people."

"And you?"

Bruce chews on his bottom lip and his eyes shift but don't rise from the counter where his notes are laid out.

"After the symptoms start, I'm not sure how long I can hold back the Other Guy."

"Do you really hulk out every time you get a cold?"

"Sometimes, if I'm lucky," and Banner looks up to meet Clint's eyes now with that terribly painful smile he has, "I don't get sick."

Well, isn't that a kick in the gut.

* * *

Tony stops in with food and the news that the first attempt to create a vaccine has failed. "But I think I know what they're doing wrong; I've got some ideas..." and with his new knowledge of virology, Tony successfully distracts himself and Bruce for nearly fifteen minutes in a discussion of attenuation versus inactivity. Then he runs out of things to say and makes a crack about needing to put coins in the meter before fleeing.

The food is curry for Bruce from his favorite place, and a calzone for Clint. The archer never really got attached to the food of any place he's been sent for a mission, but the smell of Bruce's food brings back memories. They both end up dragging out stories of misadventures they've had running into different cultures and making missteps; they're both just Midwestern boys who have needed to be adaptable and resilient from a very young age. It doesn't matter that most of Barton's stories end with an acrobatic escape in the nick of time where Banner's tend to go in a more diplomatic direction; they both know that feeling of "Oh, shit, I just missed something important, didn't I?"

Two more people die during the night; Clint holds Bruce tightly by both shoulders and feeds him numbers, and doesn't tell him that things will be okay.

* * *

Clint gets sick first.

They're both busy tending to the six remaining test subjects, so Clint just doesn't get around to telling Bruce that his head has started to hurt until they bump into each other at the sink and Bruce can feel the unnatural heat of the archer's arm.

Bruce growls at Clint to sit down, rest, and drink something, in a tone Clint knows not to argue with. Clint sits and takes the pineapple flavored coconut water that Bruce hands him.

Bruce's latest supply list had had some strange food items on it.

"I thought you just had eccentric tastes. But all this stuff is actually medicine, isn't it? Now I'm even more scared it'll taste weird."

Clint is pleased out of all proportion to see that his comment has caused Bruce to relax slightly and even smile just a bit. Clint puts it down to the fever.

"Spend enough time trying to help people with no access to modern medicine, and you learn a few tricks," Bruce says. "Drink it."

It's not bad; under the pineapple there are odd flavors, like caramel with a touch of metal, but it's not bad. Bruce stuffs a thermometer into Clint's ear, and gives him two pills of ibuprofen. Clint washes them down with more of the pineapple stuff.

The shadow starts to creep back over Bruce's expression as it sinks in what's happening to his companion. To combat this, Clint asks questions about science that he's not really interested in the answers to. Bruce can tell, and what they end up doing is a compromise, Bruce dredging up Weird Science Facts that he thinks might interest Clint, like the characteristics of a duck's penis (life changing stuff) and the life cycle of the fig wasp (creepy as hell). Eventually Bruce ends up just describing episodes of Mythbusters.

"...And it turns out elephants really are afraid of mice," Bruce says with a chuckle.

"That I did know," Clint replies. "From personal experience. Elephants are such big sissies."

That somehow gets them on to the topic of rudimentary veterinary care for large mammals, which is a subject where Clint has the edge, but Bruce knows enough to follow along. Some things Clint knows to do but doesn't know why, and when Bruce can explain those it's actually kinda interesting.

Around this time, Natasha comes back to sit outside the glass, and Cap leaves as awkwardly as he arrived.

"How are you feeling, partner?" Tasha asks Clint.

"Oh, you know," he says, sitting on the now-empty bed closest to the glass. "Not too bad considering this mission has gone on for two days longer than I expected."

She smiles. "Bored yet?"

"Oh God yes. I'm sick of these walls. I miss my perch and television and watching Tony being a drunken idiot. This jerk is all sensible and full of science facts and no fun at all." Clint smiles and throws a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Bruce.

Then he goes serious again for a second.

"Get anything out of the guy?"

Natasha looks back at him steadily. "Maybe. I had one of the virologists in my ear the whole time telling me what questions to ask." She rolls her eyes at that. "He got very excited at one point and started yelling. I'm guessing that was a good sign."

Clint lounges on the hospital bed, head propped up by an elbow. "Sounds like you got the goods. Like always. You're amazing, you know that?"

Natasha looks...shocked...no, stricken. Like she's just taken a blow to the chest. It's hard to see because it's subtle, but that's the look. Clint knows it.

"What? Can't take a compliment?"

She scowls at him. "You want to make me feel good, keep playing the fool the way you always do. It's starting to sound like you're trying to say goodbye."

"What? No, no!" He sits up quickly - feeling slightly dizzy, but he manages not to show it - and leans towards the glass. "I'm just...well, I guess that overly polite asshole over there is rubbing off on me. Don't take it personally or anything. I'm liable to compliment anything with a pulse today." He raises an eyebrow. "If it helps, your hair is kind of a disaster right now."

She smiles a little. He's pretty sure she knows there's more to it than that. The sickness and death he's been dealing with for the past days have affected him. He wants to say the things that should be said.

That was all he had needed to say to Tasha. Moving on, back to business as usual.

Now what is he going to do about Banner?


	4. Capsized

It's the third day when Bruce first notices the headache.

He's deceptively calm as he tells Clint, walking by on his way to the box of supplies to down a plain coconut water and some painkillers of his own.

That's kind of his trademark move, now that he thinks about it. Deceptively calm.

Bruce sits down at the table he's been using as his main workstation. His eyes scan the papers but his brain is far away from any real task.

Not that any of this is truly useful. This is make-work. This is a careful network of lies designed to occupy his mind, to contain the Hulk.

It's only a matter of time now. Well, it's possible that Tony and the others will manage to put together a vaccine before he can't hold back the Other Guy any longer. He'll draw it out as long as he can.

In the last supply run he requested his favorite lavender cherry black tea and the pleasantly squat, speckled mug he often uses. Sometimes the comfort of routine things helps. He won't hold back in taking the ibuprofen. Keeping comfortable has got to be the priority.

But still.

Keeping calm will put the change off until the last possible second, but there is a threshold amount of cellular damage where he's never been able to keep control.

Bruce is angry with himself for not foreseeing this. For letting this become an issue. And, as always, for everything about himself that contributed to the creation of the Hulk.

Bruce jumps just a bit at the feeling of a hand on his shoulder. But after the "Oh, it's Clint, of course" moment, he ends up calmer than before.

"Hey, Doc. Are you doing all right?"

Clint slides into the chair next to him.

"More or less," Bruce answers. His eyes drift closed in a gesture of exhaustion.

Clint decides that that is not an acceptable answer, under the circumstances. He needs to know more about what's going on inside that head; it's always full of something.

"So are you really just going to sit around and wait for the worst to happen?"

Bruce looks at him incredulously.

"If you've got any other suggestions, I'm all ears."

"Well, what if you changed on purpose?"

"If that's supposed to be a joke...."

"Nope," The archer plants his elbows on the table and leans on one of them, slightly towards where Bruce is slumped. "Hear me out. You might not remember it, but when we fought Loki, Hulk did a whole bunch of standing around waiting for instructions. Nat told me..."

Clint watches Bruce flinch at a memory.

"Yeah, not a great day for me, either. I gave Nat as many bruises as you did. Look, she's fine, she's right over there." Clint gestures at Natasha, in her seat on the other side of the glass again. "And she told me that the green guy who chased her around the Helicarrier was totally different than the green guy who stood back and watched while we took Loki into custody. The second time, you changed on purpose."

Bruce looks at Clint, and then shakes his head. "That's not good enough reason. The best thing that could happen is I don't change."

"You told me you always change."

Bruce's mouth goes tense and small before he starts speaking again.

"The whole point of this - of everything I'm doing - is to hold off the Other Guy as long as possible so that Tony can swoop in and save the day the way he always does. I have to believe that - I have to _pretend_ to believe that - because that's how I'm keeping calm. That's what I'm clinging to, and you just want me to throw all that away?" Bruce isn't quite yelling. But he's shaking, just the tiniest bit, and he notices it himself and starts counting the remaining glass slides in his head while he talks. "I don't think I can do that."

Clint knows he's dancing around the line here, and he loves the feeling of it.

"Doc." He grabs Bruce's wrist, making the scientist look up at him. "Sometimes you just have to let go."

This moment, with the pulse pumping through the wrist in his hand, the brown eyes looking at him, open, brittle and defiant all at once, is one of the moments Clint lives for. He knows what he's going to do.

Aim. Loose.

He kisses Bruce.

The kiss is decisive, but not hard. He's trying to communicate something, not push. The scientist's lips are warm and smell of spices and chemicals. He pulls back again without waiting for a response, but leaves his hands where they are, one curled loosely around Bruce's neck, the other still encircling his wrist.

Bruce's face fills with a mixture of confusion and indignation.

"What the hell?!?" He shakes his head a little, eyes still trained on Clint as if he were a dangerous animal. "Are you actually insane?"

Clint smiles. The kiss might have provoked Hulk's anger but Clint can see that it's caught the attention of Bruce's brain even more. He watches gears engage and turn behind Bruce's eyes as the scientist tries to figure out what just happened.

Bruce's eyes narrow.

"Is this some kind of experiment to you? You want to poke the Hulk to see what he'll do? That's idiotic, and it's certainly not the time!"

"Doc, I don't do experiments."

Bruce's eyebrows crinkle and confusion becomes foremost again. "Then why...?"

"Why do people usually kiss people?" Clint sits back and continues to enjoy the show that is Bruce's face. It's good to see something there that isn't stress or resignation. Clint is very pleased with himself.

In Bruce's head, the waters of emotion are stirred up, but they're not threatening to rise up and overwhelm him. It's like high waves at low tide.

It's a new feeling, and what emotions are even involved, he's not sure.

Bruce looks at Clint, who's sitting beside him with a look that's part smug, part something softer. Three days ago he'd had very little idea who this man was. Now he knows Clint is flashy, fearless, idiotic, does things on impulse and never wastes a moment's time regretting them. That's very appealing to someone who spends the vast majority of his time regretting.

And his smile is phenomenal.

Bruce has trained himself very carefully not to think about these things. No one could get close; no one would be safe. Clint clearly doesn't give a fig what's safe and what's not.

Bruce struggles with himself, trying not to even ask the question of what he actually wants for himself. That's a place he hasn't let himself go in years. Bruce's life hasn't been about what he wanted since the creation of the Other Guy.

But Clint's already put himself in danger; he's already probably going to die. And the archer's made it clear what he wants. Why not play along, let the guy feel good for a little while before the symptoms get worse?

But Bruce can't do that; it would be wrong, because if he does die, his life would have ended with a lie, and that seems somehow dishonorable. And, if through some miracle, they both live? That would be an awkward breakup.

So Bruce's mind circles back to the question: what does he want?

There's a terrible mess of scar tissue at this place in his mind; it's hard to make himself even touch the question, because of the memory of pain. But he does, for Clint.

Bruce wants...this. The warmth that radiates from Clint like a star. The way he shrugs things off without a second glance. The fact that he's far more giving than he'd ever let on. The way he kissed, with passion but without demanding....

The dark water is threatening to overflow, and in fact Bruce can feel water on his cheeks...there's very little anger in him now, but plenty of pain, and pain will do the trick just as surely.

Bruce feels something else now. Clint has taken one of Bruce's hands in both of his, palm up, and is moving his thumbs across the skin in patterns too deliberate to be random. Bruce focuses in on the motions; glad to have a question to untangle that doesn't mean having to tear his mind away from the beautiful new thing that is Clint.

Clint's left thumb moves in curving patterns, radiating out from and curving around a central hub. His right thumb presses different areas in sequence, rarely sliding along the skin. Occasionally his fingers twitch across the back of Bruce's hand.

Bruce focuses on the sensations, focuses on the patterns, and then laughs.

"You're playing PS3," he chuckles.

"Yep," Clint says, and then sighs with exaggerated drama. "I miss Stark Tower and all of Tony's toys."

His hands haven't stopped their movements. Bruce is now simply enjoying the touch, as the dark water in his mind calms to a mild sloshing, the residual effects of the world rearranging itself completely.

So. Him and Clint Barton.

This was not a possibility that Bruce had remotely considered.

Part of Bruce's brain insists on reminding him that it can't work; that the kind of relationship this seems to be turning into is too dangerous for him to have with anyone. It would just be a dream, a thing that they would pretend could live past this room, this disease.

But it's real, in that they both want it; and for the time they have left, that could be enough.

Bruce scrubs the tears away from his eyes with his free hand, and leans somewhat awkwardly towards Clint, who understands immediately and kisses him again, in the same way but for much longer this time. The beast inside Bruce stays shockingly calm; it's enough to raise neurotransmitter levels, he supposes, but with very little increase in pulse rate. Bruce wonders idly if Clint ever learned to be a lion tamer.

After a while, Bruce gets up and goes to check on their patients. Five of the six are stable or have actually gotten stronger; they may last for a while yet with only the help of basic care and antivirals. The sixth, a woman probably in her fifties, might not live through another night.

* * *

Clint makes his way back to the bed nearest the glass, grabbing a drink and more ibuprofen on his way. He collapses onto the bed, turning his head to look at Tasha.

"I suppose you heard most of that," he says.

Natasha smiles, "Of course. I'm a spy." She cocks her head at him. "It's funny. You seem more like yourself now, despite all this, than you have for weeks. What is it about him that makes you able to forget what Loki did to you?"

"It's not exactly him, and I haven't exactly forgotten."

"What is it then?"

"I figure...this is a decision nobody but me would ever be stupid enough to make. I know it's mine."

They both chuckle at that.

Clint finishes his drink, then falls into a doze; it's early, and Tasha can't help but be reminded that the usually hyperaware archer has a serious disease.

An hour or so later, Bruce finishes what he's doing and comes over to curl up behind Clint on the bed, arm thrown over the archer. Natasha pretends not to watch them.

Love might be for children...but when had any of them gotten the chance to be children? Perhaps now is as good a time as any. Perhaps now is Clint's last chance.

She'd meant what she said to Stark - "I'd do whatever I wanted to do, with whoever I wanted to do it with."

She hopes Clint gets a chance to enjoy this.


	5. Loosed

Bruce wakes up feeling achy and overheated. The dark water is bubbling dangerously, until he opens his eyes.

He's crushed up against Clint, who has rolled over in the night and is clinging to him and shivering.

"Clint, wake up," he says, gently shaking the man's shoulder. When Clint blinks at him he smiles a little, then gets up to find the thermometer, more ibuprofen and some water.

He takes both their temperatures, and then hands over four pills, taking four himself.

"I always get told off by doctors for taking more than two," Clint ponders as he sits up. "Are you sure you're a real doctor?"

That almost gets a laugh out of Bruce, despite his next words. "Your fever is dangerously close to the point of potential brain damage. Just take them."

Clint does. Bruce tells him to go back to sleep if he can before going to check on the others, and do what he can for them. The woman is still hanging on, and Bruce breathes a sigh of relief.

After that, Bruce makes himself tea, and he sits and drinks it at that same table with his notes strewn across it. He tries to find something to work on, but it's difficult to focus. This could be a problem.

After a while, he gives up and takes his chair and his mug to sit by the glass. Clint is sleeping again, so he turns to look at Natasha, who is, of course, wide awake.

"Any news from the labs?" he asks.

"Tony came by while you were asleep. There are some cereal bars and muffins in the UV chamber, by the way." She crosses her legs and looks down. "The second vaccine they tried also failed, but it didn't include the sequencing tricks they wanted to try. The third one should be in the testing phase late this afternoon. Also Tony and Jarvis have been working the nanobot angle. I didn't really understand anything he said about that but he seemed excited."

"That's good," he says, and then his gaze moves to Clint.

"He told me I should change on purpose," Bruce says, half to himself and half to her. "And then he very effectively distracted me from arguing against it."

"Sounds like one of Clint's ideas," she responds.

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" He looks at her from under eyebrows curled with bemused humor.

Natasha sighs, leaning forward very slightly, hands on her knees.

"Clint might not seem intelligent at first glance, but he has a way of making mental jumps based on instinct that I've never seen anyone else do. From taking a shot in a storm, to refusing to kill me when he had the chance. He does the things that seem crazy, but he ends up pulling them off."

"But you still don't like the idea."

"It doesn't sit well with me, no. But I trust Clint with my life. As much as the Hulk frightens me, if he thinks he can pull this off, there's a good chance he's right."

Bruce smirks sadly at her. "You aren't really giving me much of the basis for arguing with him I was hoping for."

She smiles back. "He's very hard to argue with, isn't he?"

"I wasn't sure if that was just me. I'm not the most objective judge at the moment."

He looks at Clint, still sleeping and with his cheeks red from fever. Tony's latest nickname for him, "Cupid," has never seemed more appropriate. Bruce suddenly feels the need to touch him, to make sure he's breathing and that this thing they've started is real. He stands up.

And abruptly sits down again.

Bruce hadn't realized he was this sick already, but standing makes him dizzy. He breathes deeply a couple of times, and then tries again. This time he picks up his chair and takes it with him to the head of the bed.

He takes Clint's pulse, and then he just doesn't take his hand away.

It's strange, the way Bruce is feeling now. The dark water is rising, but it's not agitated the way he's felt it before. It's more of a steady flooding. He'll be inevitably overwhelmed. Bruce wonders. Maybe if he manages to stay calm, he can predict the exact moment he'll change.

Maybe he can change the moment before.

Clint wakes up then, and looks at him.

"Hey, Doc. How are we doing?"

"Not too bad," Bruce says, handing Clint a bottle of water. "They think they might have a working treatment by the end of the day. You'll be fine if it works. Well, if I don't...I...don't know if I'll be able to last that long."

Clint looks hard at the scientist. "You've been thinking about what I said?"

"Yes," Bruce says. "But we haven't reached that point yet. I'll let you know if it starts to seem likely that I'll change soon."

He looks at Clint's pleased face and chuckles a little. "You don't seem like a master manipulator, but I couldn't even have imagined thinking twice about this. I was going to say 'most definitely no,' and then you got me completely sidetracked."

Clint grins. "What can I say; Tasha's taught me a few things."

* * *

That afternoon, one of the test subjects wakes up.

He's still very weak, but he smiles when he sees them. He tries to speak and after a couple of minutes of coughing and some water, he says, "it's good to see healthy human faces."

Bruce and Clint look at each other. Clint smirks a bit. "Well I'm human," he says.

"One out of four," Bruce replies with a rueful smile.

They sit down with him and spend a few minutes filling him in, and the man explains how he was captured and how the robots (Cap and Tony had taken them down elsewhere in the lair) had been running the experiments in the isolated lab.

The man is talking about wanting to see his daughter again when Bruce feels the dark water stir again. He stands up abruptly, clutching the back of his chair to combat the resulting dizziness.

"Bruce, you all right?" Clint looks up at him, with concern turning to speculation as he sees Bruce's expression.

Bruce doesn't answer, just turns as the dizziness fades, walking back to the corner where he has his electric kettle and a pad of graph paper. He paces, fists tightening.

"You're not all right," Clint says. The idiot followed him. Bruce is barely keeping his composure.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious. You're not making this easier."

"You'd feel better if you let him out, just for a minute."

"Not if I hurt someone else." Bruce feels himself slipping and begins mentally cataloging his remaining tea.

"You won't."

Bruce can't hear any doubt in Clint's voice.

Well, soon there won't be a choice to make.

He looks around him. The walk-in refrigerator is a few steps away, walls insulated and sheathed in metal.

"All right," Bruce says, breathing deeply, trying not to let the mere idea of what he's contemplating drive him over the edge. "I'll go in here. Protect the patients if you can, but run if you have to."

He closes the door to the refrigerated compartment and leans against the cool bulk of the door.

He closes his eyes and lets himself sink beneath the dark water.

This is different. This isn't the sea of hot, caustic emotions that has eaten him up before. This is pain and desperation and hope and fear and it's not pleasant, but he can open his eyes in the cloudy water and catch just a glimpse of what's going on around him.

There's the fierce rush of waking up, and then there's confusion - the Hulk is looking for direction, and he's not finding it. There's the feeling of enclosure. There's anger - and then there's Clint.

There's joy.

Wait. Bruce struggles to think.

Why is Clint here? He shouldn't be here! It's too dangerous.

There's a rush of panic.

Bruce scrambles for thought. Numbers, words, shapes, anything he can grasp onto to pull himself out of this increasingly cloudy water. He can't find them!

He's drowning now. Like always. Losing himself and he can't even remember _why_ he's panicking, why he's fighting. It was _important_. 

It was _important_.

Bruce despairs.

Then there's something else.

It's a tapping on the top of his - the Hulk's - forearm. There's a rhythm to it.

Hulk is confused but doesn't pull away.

Bruce takes the rhythm and focuses in, willing thought to take hold again. There are four areas; some get tapped more often, sometimes simultaneous with one of the other areas.

Oh God.

It's Rock Band drums.

This is going to turn into a thing, isn't it?

Bruce comes back to himself already laughing.

He's feeling much healthier, if slightly tired, and he helps Clint along as they walk out of the refrigerator. Clint doesn't look any more damaged now than he did the last time Bruce had seen him, but even so, Bruce gives him a very thorough checkup.

After that, and the long kiss that it leads to, Bruce looks Clint in the eyes and says, "Don't do that again."

"No promises," is the only reply he gets other than a raised eyebrow and another kiss.

"What happened, and why did you come in?" Bruce persists.

"I was curious," Clint says, showing absolutely no sign of being conscious of another motive. Perhaps he isn't conscious of it. Bruce notices his own thoughts and wonders why he even asked if he was going to assume an answer anyway.

Bruce shakes his head. "So then, what did he do? The Other Guy."

"He was angry when I came in, and then he turned and saw me and just grinned. But then he started to look confused, and after that he did a lot of yelling at nothing, like the walls were being sneaky or something and needed to be scared straight. He only took a few swings before he just kind of snorted and looked disgusted. That's when I thought I'd step in."

Bruce rubs at the pressure points under his eyebrows.

"It was stupid."

"Hey, take it or leave it, it's who I am."

"You _hit_ the Hulk."

"Not hard."

Bruce glares at him.

"You don't want to be angry with me," Clint taunts him. His hand slips around Bruce's neck and into his hair, petting him like a cat. "You like me."

Bruce sighs, shakes his head, and goes to make himself some tea. He hides his smile from Clint.

He does feel much better.

In many ways.


	6. Nocked

Clint's headache has gotten worse, and Bruce feels bad for not suffering along with him. Bruce knows it's ridiculous; if he weren't well, who would care for Clint and the others?

But still, it bothers him.

It's four thirty and there's no word from Tony. Bruce is worried the testing went bad and Tony is being a damn coward and refusing to come and tell them.

Bruce sits by Clint's bed and rubs the sides of his head gently.

"Normally I'd tell you not to mess with the hair...ah...but that feels really good," Clint says.

"What, and mine's fair game?" Bruce responds. 

Clint smiles, eyes still closed. "Yep."

"Why is that?"

"You've got Harry Potter hair," says the archer. "It doesn't matter what you do to it, it'll always be all over the place."

"Well thanks," says Bruce dryly. "I try."

"No, it's perfect. It suits you." Clint opens his eyes to look up at Bruce. "Like, something that just happened instead of being planned. It's perfect," he repeats.

Bruce gets the feeling this isn't the kind of thing Clint would normally say. It's the fever, or the knowledge that he might soon fall asleep for the last time.

"I'm sorry about all of this," he says, frowning down at Clint.

Clint laughs, and shakes his head very slightly.

"Look, Brucey, you haven't known me for very long, so I'll explain something. The guy you've seen skulking around the tower, who spends all his time in the shooting range? That's not me. This is me. The annoying guy who does things just because they're funny. I got to eat calzones delivered at the speed of Iron Man. I got to hear about coffee creamer fireballs. I got to make out with a cute guy. I haven't thought about my bow since I stowed it once the building was cleared. If this is my last week, it's been a good one."

Bruce isn't tearing up. No, not at all. "You're not going to die," he says.

Clint smiles, mostly with his eyebrows. "Well, just to be sure, let's make the most of this right now."

Bruce kisses Clint, and for once he's not consumed with worry over what the Other Guy might do; for once it's not the most important thing in his world. The most important thing is kissing Clint, burying his tongue in the other man's mouth, feeling Clint's fingers curl through and pull gently on his hair, listening to the sound of both of them breathing. Breath is a beautiful thing.

Natasha clears her throat loudly, but they ignore her.

"Hey, fellas. How's the prison food?" they hear next, and then a startled sound. Bruce looks up to see Tony, helmet off, entering the lab - just as his face leaves shock and crosses the border into glee.

"Wow," Tony says. "And I thought _I_ had interesting news."

Bruce blinks, and then grins back.

"So I'm guessing the new vaccine passed testing?" he says, gesturing to Tony's uncovered head. 

"Yep, plus some more specific antivirals we were developing on the side, and these new medical nanobots. I've had the basic designs for years but never got around to actually putting them into development. Any volunteers to be the first human test subject?"

"I can't, I'm already cured," Bruce shrugs apologetically.

Tony raises an eyebrow at him.

"I got to practice my Hulk taming skills," Clint says, levering himself up enough to catch Tony's eye and smirk. "Not actually that hard if you know the trick to it." Then Clint flinches and puts a hand to his head. "Oh, I am _so_ ready to kick this stupid virus."

"You volunteering?" Tony asks, holding up a syringe.

"Yeah, just hang on one second," Clint says. "I was in the middle of something."

Tony rolls his eyes and walks over to the glass, where he finds Natasha looking smug.

"Is this a new thing? How does having a cold put romance in the air? I hate having colds. They make me miserable, not...whatever that is."

Nat smiles a little and shakes her head. "Let's just say it's been a very important week for them."

God, Natasha is uncanny. Tony glances away from her, towards the other two.

Yep, still kissing.

Tony supposes it's not like it's a bad view.

Bruce pulls away reluctantly. "All right, time to get you well," he says.

* * *

The cocktail of custom antivirals and nanobots does its work. In a couple of hours, Clint's fever has started to go down, and he hasn't experienced any side effects more troubling than a slight itching which leaves him all too aware that there is Stark tech circulating in his bloodstream.

They decide to try it on the other patients, beginning with the woman in the worst condition. She doesn't show improvement as quickly as Clint did, but she doesn't get worse, either, which Bruce finds very reassuring. Rob, the man who woke first, seems like he will recover fine on his own. Tony offers him a dose of nanobots to speed things up, but he declines, saying he's been experimented on by robots quite enough recently.

Anyway Tony has set up a temporary hospital ward in one of the Stark Tower labs, and once they get back there, everyone in the building will have been properly vaccinated. So they bring everybody back there via helicopter, and Bruce sees them all settled in with real doctors and nurses, and then he doesn't have to think about that problem anymore, and then he sits down in his own lab and sort of just feels lost.

This was never supposed to happen.

Bruce Banner does not get to have a romantic relationship.

Colleagues, occasionally. Friends, maybe. But romance? No. Completely irresponsible. Incredibly dangerous. Entirely out of the question. 

He buries himself in work, setting up to run that last radiation experiment again, double checking all the equipment. Catches up on the journal articles he missed. Plays solitaire with actual cards. Reads Wikipedia articles looking for factual errors to correct. Counts pigeons as they fly past his windows. Anything to keep his mind from the inevitable realization that he has to end things with Clint.

Before he gets too attached. Before the emotions gain too much ground. Before the Hulk starts deciding things for him.

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut. He feels the dark water bubbling up. He's afraid it might already be too late. No...he looks at the papers in front of him, full of numbers but he can't make his brain process their meaning, so he picks one - 2742 (Two thousand seven hundred and forty-two factors to two, three, and...four hundred and fifty-seven). This isn't working the way it usually does. Bruce breathes and traces the skyline with his eyes, counting the angles, and watches the pigeons.

"Bruce."

He turns to see Clint in the doorway and can't even summon a smile. He's focusing too much of himself on - he doesn't even know what, now. Not smiling? He's forgotten the point of the exercise. After a minute, realizing he's just been standing and staring, Bruce lets himself smile.

Bruce really doesn't want to start talking and this is the point where things would get awkward, except Clint is Clint, so he says, "I'm going down to the shooting range; you'd better come with and keep an eye on me, because Nat was worried about me training to the point of exhaustion _before_ I was exposed to a deadly engineered virus." And he turns and leaves again.

Well, that was certainly a compelling argument.

Bruce follows. He's never really been able to watch the archer in action, and aside from the stated reason, the scientist is also curious. 

Clint is waiting for him at the elevator. He smiles a little as Bruce comes around the corner, an expression that's reminiscent of an 'I-told-you-so.' 

Clint spends the time on the elevator telling Bruce about how Rob's daughter got her vaccination and was allowed to come and visit the ward. "But no one who's been in the ward is allowed to leave Stark Tower until the vaccine is more widely distributed, so Tony set them up with an apartment and video conference equipment so the kid can do school from here. Stark really knows what's good for PR."

Bruce wonders how long he's going to be able to fool himself. To tell himself that he can put off this conversation just a little longer.

On the advice of his doctors, Clint's not using his favorite bow. Something with a lighter draw is probably wise but he wants the feel of the tension behind his fingers. He picks one of his practice bows, a long recurve, the kind he'd use when he was first learning to shoot, and it seems somehow appropriate with Bruce watching him for the first time.

Clint loops his bowstring around one end of the bow, plants that end on the floor on the outside of his left foot, steps through the arch of the bow with his right foot, presses the top arm of the bow down and in with his right hand, and strings the bow with his left.

He straps on his glove and arm guard. He fills his quiver with practice arrows, and begins.

He holds the bow in his right hand. He takes an arrow with his left. His feet seat themselves in their proper places on the floor. He slides the arrow into position, guiding the shaft into place with his right index finger and nocking the back to the string with his left hand.

Then he draws.

It's like a breath of fresh air, the way his muscles respond, perfectly, smoothly, naturally. Right arm straight, fingers relaxed, heel of the hand and arch of the thumb cradling the waiting beast that is the bow. Left elbow up and back, three fingers crooked around the string, left thumb brushing the skin at the corner of his mouth. Shoulders properly aligned, back and arms burning with the effort, eyes focused on the target.

He releases. Perfectly, completely. He breathes out, and he smiles.

This is the most beautiful thing Bruce has ever seen. Clint Barton is clearly very much in harmony with his body, his capability as a fighter, and though it may not seem like it sometimes, his emotional core. And when Clint gifts him with that glowing smile of triumph, Bruce can only return it. 

Bruce watches the tension in the muscles, the focus in the eyes. When that becomes too much, he looks at the angles, the speed, the curve of the arrow's flight. 

There's so much here to learn.

Clint empties his quiver into the center section of the target. Then he sets down his bow to go and retrieve his arrows.

Bruce compares how he feels now to how he felt alone in his lab, overthinking. Overthinking the way this man never does and never will. Bruce wants to know how to be tense and relaxed, angry and carefree, destructive and stable, all at the same time but in exactly the right ways and precisely at the times and places which will make these weaknesses/strengths as useful as they can be.

He watches as the archer approaches his bow, and the scientist gestures to it.

"Will you teach me?" Bruce asks.

"You're not going to give up on me, are you?" Clint asks with a sideways look and an eyebrow.

Bruce lets out a long breath; it's too late. He wants this too badly.

"All I can promise is to give it my best shot," he says.

Clint beams. "Fantastic. Let's do this."

He wraps his arm around Bruce, and kisses him, intense but soft.


	7. Fletched

Clint plays with Bruce's hair as Bruce attempts to get through a level of Little Big Planet without dying. Normally Bruce avoids video games because he sees how frustrating they can be for other people. But Clint has talked Bruce and Steve into trying this game, and it is pretty fun when Bruce can manage not to run out of lives.

"I like that there are so many cooperative games nowadays," says Steve. "There's enough fighting and competition in the real world."

"He's just saying that because he dies even more than you do," Clint tells Bruce, and then whispers loudly in the direction of Bruce's ear, "Every game is a competition." Then he puts his hands over Bruce's on the controller, and on the screen the little green sack smacks the little red white and blue sack, sending it flying.

Steve makes an annoyed noise but keeps his focus on the game. Bruce is about to complain at Clint, but then a memory from the Chitauri battle comes back to him suddenly and vividly. It's of Thor, going flying pretty much the same way the little cloth Cap just had on the screen. 

Bruce had already turned to speak to Clint, so Clint sees the flickers of anger, amusement and confusion go past in Bruce's eyes. "What just happened?" the archer asks, real concern in his eyes for once, and Bruce is reassured to know that Clint doesn't take the Hulk lightly.

But that had been communication, not an attempted takeover. The dark water lay low and relatively still. Bruce smiles slightly as he replies to Clint.

"Hulk wants you to know that _he_ thinks you're hilarious."

"Really?" Clint throws an arm across Bruce's shoulders. "I like the Hulk more and more."

Bruce shakes his head. "And _he_ likes smacking smug blond allies in the middle of battle. So watch yourself."

Clint laughs.

"Don't worry," he says. "I'll always do my best to be polite to the Big Guy when he's in a smashy mood."

The words may be flippant and it's not a promise to stay away, but the tone is sincere, and Bruce is finally getting comfortable with the fact that Clint has good instincts, knows where to draw the line, and there's no use trying to tell him to back away from it. His nature is to walk the line and push the limits.

Bruce leans back against Clint's chest and continues to guide the little green ragdoll across the screen. Things go all right for a bit, and then he gets squashed by some kind of heavy falling object. Bruce sighs, and Clint squeezes his shoulder. 

Everything is going well. For Bruce Banner. That can't be right.

Everything is too good to be true, and they still haven't talked about the thing that's worrying Bruce the most.

* * *

Clint tries not to learn new things too often.

This is because once he knows how to do something, he feels a need to be the best at it. Life has taught him that if you say you can do something, you damn well better be able to perform. 

He likes the bow because there is a small enough number of elite archers in the world that he can be fairly certain he's the best. When he says he can shoot something, if he can't, then no one can.

So he's good at sex. But he's never really tried his hand at romance.

Anyone can be mediocre to fair at romance. Most people are. It's not a rare thing to have in your repertoire. Clint has had no interest in having an average relationship, a normal life. He always sort of thought he'd live out his life without romance. That no relationship could catch his interest as rare enough, unusual enough, challenging enough that making it happen would mean something.

And now there's Bruce.

It hadn't been a plan or anything. He'd just seen how alone the guy looked, and how impossible it seemed to help him.

Impossible tasks have always felt like a challenge to Clint. Everything from trick shots to turning the Black Widow. Someone wants to tell Clint Barton it's impossible, Clint wants to prove them wrong.

Now he has the Hulk nearly eating out of his hand and Bruce trusting him to try it. This is romance and this is the challenge of his life and when exactly had this become a thing he wanted?

Clint isn't sure what's going to happen but he knows that he's going to learn how to make this work.

* * *

Bruce invites Clint into his room that evening and makes them both tea in his kitchen because there is no more avoiding this particular conversation. 

Clint smiles and doesn't drink his tea and uses his spoon to fling grapes across the room and into an empty cup because it doesn't matter what Bruce says, he knows all the arguments and he isn't giving up.

Bruce has to start somewhere.

"There are a lot of things that I feel responsible for, and the phrase 'I couldn't stand it if such-and-such happened' became meaningless a long time ago. Things happen, because of me, and I have to move on because I can't die and I can't live under the weight of all of it. At this point every decision I make in my life is about reducing the chance of accumulating more regrets." Bruce's hand clenches a bit around his mug as he thinks of all the times he's shut a possibility out just for this reason.

"Somehow, and I don't understand how, you've convinced me to make an exception for...whatever this is. But that doesn't mean I can just forget how dangerous I am. And there are some things that I just can't risk trying. Push me too far, and I'm done. You understand that, right?"

Clint has stopped flinging grapes across the room and now he's just got one sitting in his spoon, and occasionally he tosses it into the air and catches it again.

"I've got it," he says.

"You do? And that's okay with you? Never having sex? Just being...I don't know, middle school boyfriends for however long we both decide to.... God, Clint, it can't last forever. What are we even playing at here?"

Clint puts down his spoon, the grape still wobbling inside. He leans forward across the table and looks Bruce in the eye. 

"Will you trust me not to push you too far? Because I'm going to push. I want to see where your limits are - not for me, for you." Clint sighs and leans into one hand, elbow propped on the table and fingers hiding one eye. "That way if this doesn't work, at least you'll know. If I get too annoying, maybe you can work out how to be with someone else." He looks up at Bruce with his uncovered eye. "This is just something I feel like I can do, you know? Just let me try. Let me do this for you."

Bruce gapes. Then he shakes his head.

"You have to know the only reason I'm even considering this is that it's you. It's not like you're the first person to know about the Hulk...know the worst...and still want to risk it. If it was as simple as informed consent it would have happened long ago. It's not that I'm ready to try this, because I'm not. I am unequivocally _not_ ready to let someone be around me when I'm in that place. It's you."

Bruce looks down at his tea, and he rotates his mug with his fingertips. Then he smiles to himself.

"It's ironic how I'm afraid of scaring you off."

Then he looks up at Clint again, with eyes that are full of fear, pain, amusement, gentleness, and the ever-present anger and frustration at the universe, and he says, "It's ridiculous how much I trust you, after how many days? But you're...you've got a way of sidestepping the Other Guy, fighting him without fighting...." Bruce sighs. "When you're around, I almost believe...that I could have something good without destroying it."

Bruce chews on his lip.

"Shit," Clint says, and he's got some of the same pain-and-amusement thing going on in his eyes. "I figured maybe you just thought I was pretty." 

He smiles and stands up, retrieving the cup of grapes from the counter and bringing it to the table. He sets it down near where Bruce is sitting.

"Well, now that that's settled," Clint says, and he sets himself down on Bruce's lap, straddling but not quite pushed against him. Bruce is too startled, or perhaps a better word would be entranced, to argue. "Let's start finding out what we _can_ do."

He puts his hands on the back of Bruce's neck, forearms resting on his shoulders, and for a long moment he doesn't do anything more, just watches Bruce's eyes.

Bruce hesitates, assessing, then relaxes enough to rest his hands on Clint's thighs. This is intimate, yes, and something deep inside of Bruce has wanted this, is howling at him that more is necessary. But it's not sexual, not yet, and his pulse is steady, and the dark water, although active, isn't threatening to rise and overwhelm him.

Clint is watching still, and his eyes relax a little now. The next thing he does is simply to lower his head so that his forehead is resting against Bruce's. 

Bruce closes his eyes. He's just drinking in the touch. The water has risen a little, but it's also calmed slightly. As he gets comfortable with the feel of Clint against him, there's less desperation and more - well, satisfaction, or contentment. At this point he's hesitant to call it love.

Well, maybe it is love. Love like a child should be given. Love that is simply the desire to be close, to help, to calm.

Bruce moves one of his hands to Clint's neck, just resting it there, hoping to convey the same feeling. Through half-closed eyes, he sees a smile appear on Clint's mouth, and thinks he has.

Bruce feels very calm.

Clint takes a breath and lifts his head, sharp eyes again assessing. Then his fingers begin to wander up Bruce's neck and through his hair. In return, Bruce brushes his thumb along Clint's jaw. There's just the slightest increase in breathing rate, for them both. 

Clint very, very slowly lowers his head again, bringing his lips to meet Bruce's, and they're hot and so sweet against the scientist's mouth. Like before it's neither teasing nor demanding, just a slow, light pressure as lips move against each other.

Bruce is profoundly happy.

But he also wants more, and now he's gotten curious about how much he can take. He raises his chin, pushing up further into the kiss, tongue tasting Clint's mouth. Clint allows it, but he waits for a few seconds before returning the enthusiasm, pushing his tongue into Bruce's mouth with a slow, soft, steady pressure that almost manages not to start a wildfire.

Bruce is slipping. He wants more and he's pressing into Clint's mouth, hand inching up Clint's thigh before he realizes what's happening.

Clint pulls away then, both of them gasping. Clint smiles broadly and puts his forehead against Bruce's again, and their breathing slows together. 

"Enough for tonight?" he asks, when he can again.

Bruce nods slightly. When he speaks, he says, "Thank you."

Clint stands up, shaking his head. "Thank me later, when we see what we can really get up to." And grinning, Clint leaves for his own rooms.

"That's more than anyone else has ever done for me," Bruce murmurs at the empty kitchen.


	8. Flying

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My gosh, this is just smut. I wrote actual smut. Me.

Clint kisses Bruce, and Bruce, lying on the bed beneath him, does his best to relax.

It's been two weeks since that kiss in Bruce's kitchen, and Clint has, as promised, pushed Bruce, just a little at a time, getting him used to the sensations and his own reactions to them. It's been a gradual process of learning to let Clint take the lead, learning not to rush, learning to relax rather than engage in the push and pull that is lust and that threatens to wake the Other Guy.

Clint is holding Bruce's wrists gently down on the bed, kissing him the way he does, slowly, sweetly, without pressure. Bruce breathes deliberately and steadily through his nose. He moves his mouth against Clint's but doesn't lift his head. For as long as he can stand it, he doesn't move, doesn't press against Clint the way he would love to. He puts all of his focus into the feel of Clint's mouth against his, and stays present in that, rather than looking for more. But the heat is growing, slowly but surely. Bruce wants more pressure, more contact, more of Clint in his mouth. He holds back. He holds back. He jerks up.

Clint feels it coming and pulls back smoothly, never letting extra pressure spark the fire. Bruce gasps, and then gains control of his breathing again.

Clint moves one hand, now holding Bruce's wrist in place with an elbow, and holding his head still with fingers in his hair, just a gentle reminder, a presence that Bruce presses back into. It steadies him, and his breathing slows further. Clint watches him for a moment, then continues to kiss Bruce, still slow, still calm. Bruce feels as though he's floating; the dark water is dominant, but unthreatening. Bruce's thoughts remain clear.

Clint's fingers move through his hair, simultaneously calming and warming. The archer's other hand leaves Bruce's wrist, and Bruce feels the tickle on his chest as his shirt buttons are undone. Bruce breathes, floats, and continues to drink in the feeling of Clint's mouth on his.

Clint switches hands now so that the one slides out of Bruce's hair while the other curls into it. Both of Bruce's arms are free to move now, but he doesn't lift them. He's relaxed and content.

Clint's hand settles onto Bruce's chest, over his heart, and rests there for a moment. Then it moves down, slowly and with a light pressure, and this is affectionate but almost clinical in a way, because it's so matter-of-fact.

It's in the hollow beneath his ribs now, and the kisses have slowed further so that Bruce can focus on that hand and the skin it touches. It's on his belly now, and it turns sideways, parking itself over Bruce's bellybutton, pressing just a little and then just resting.

Bruce is breathing quickly but evenly. Clint breaks the kiss again and pulls away completely just for a moment to tug off his own shirt. The last point of contact removed and the first resumed is that hand on Bruce's stomach. Then the other hand curls back into Bruce's hair. These are both grounding touches. Then Clint's mouth comes back into play, but doesn't return to Bruce's own. Instead he plants his lips on Bruce's chest, over the sternum, the same place his hand had first touched down, and sucks at the skin there very lightly.

He does the same thing slightly lower, and again slightly lower, and then breaks the chain by turning to the side and resting his cheek against Bruce's belly, just above his hand.

Bruce is full to the brim with heat, just short of the point of boiling over. Only Clint's fingers tangled in his hair and rubbing at his scalp are keeping his head on the pillow, and somehow his hands still on the bed on both sides.

Clint keeps his cheek against Bruce's belly as he moves his hand down a few inches, unfastening Bruce's fly. Bruce feels the slow, steady breaths across his stomach and the weight of Clint's head, and the way it moves with him when he breathes deeply. The heat increases just a little, and Bruce is amazed at how much he can take.

Bruce focuses on breathing as Clint pushes his pants down, along with his boxers. Clint feels Bruce tense, and he moves his hand in Bruce's hair, stroking behind Bruce's ear with his thumb, affectionate and calming.

Bruce gasps as Clint lays his hand on Bruce's now naked thigh. Clint turns his head slightly to press a kiss to Bruce's stomach. Bruce is still floating in what is now a sea of pleasure, but he's also burning with increasing urgency. His hands begin to twitch against the sides of the pillow.

There aren't words to describe how much Clint is enjoying this.

This is a challenge, this is the impossible and he's doing it. Bruce Banner is trembling under him; Clint's hands are holding back the Hulk.

The tension in Bruce's neck and the muscles of his thigh is increasing slowly. Clint is exhilarated by it. He kisses Bruce's stomach again, and his mouth moves up the other man's chest again, the touches becoming lighter, more feathery, more seductive. There's a shudder beneath him as Clint's lips brush a nipple, then move back towards center.

"Clint," Bruce gasps. "I don't...." One of his hands ventures out from beside the pillow, moving jerkily to cup Clint's shoulder and squeeze surprisingly lightly. "Clint, please," he says, almost a whine.

The water is getting choppier. Bruce's skin is flooded with sensation, heat going head to toe in waves. Clint's hand slides up Bruce's thigh. The shaking gets more intense. Clint's hand curls around Bruce decisively.

Bruce sees stars. His hand tightens on Clint's shoulder and his whole body arches, practically levitating off the bed. Sensations tear through, rip open his entire being. He's so close to going under and maybe he even does for a split second. But he surfaces again, bobbing like a cork on the little waves that are the echoes of the main event.

"Bruce," he hears, and he feels Clint's thumb rubbing at his temple, fingers still buried in his hair. "Honey, are you with me?"

Now Bruce feels like he's swimming in taffy, or something else thick and sweet and difficult to escape. "I'm with you," he manages to murmur. He blinks a little, then looks up at Clint, who is grinning like a lunatic. Bruce smiles back drowsily. "We did it," he says, and makes a great effort to roll onto his side so he can wrap his arms around Clint.

Clint returns the embrace, still grinning. "Told you so," he whispers fiercely.

"Hmmm," Bruce hums into the skin at the junction of Clint's neck and shoulder. "I think I'll be tame long enough to return the favor now," he says before lightly biting Clint's neck.

"Ah," Clint breathes. "How can I say no to that?" And he efficiently shimmies out of his pants before clamping himself back on to Bruce like some kind of tentacled sea creature, fingers exploring the muscles of the other man's back and legs intertwining and pulling them together, rubbing against Bruce enthusiastically. Bruce wonders if he can really turn need on and off like a switch or if he'd been feeling this way the whole time. Either way, Clint is completely remarkable.

Bruce explores Clint's body now in a way he never thought he'd be able to do. He runs his fingers over the slim but muscular torso, the arms and neck that are like steel cables. He's now convinced that Clint could last for hours if he had to, but it doesn't take long once Bruce's exploration has moved to the relevant area.

Clint groans with pleasure into the skin of Bruce's shoulder, pants a little, then goes completely limp, still wrapped around Bruce. They lie like that for several minutes before either of them can gather the will to get up and find a towel or something. But then they both get up, and once they've returned to the bed, cleaned up and with pajama pants, they clamp back on to each other the same way and fall asleep.

* * *

Tony can tell something is up as soon as he spots Bruce the next morning.

He scowls in confusion. "Well, you're looking exceptionally...springy this morning. Did you get new Tigger parts installed without telling me?"

Bruce has a hard time not grinning from ear to ear, but he manages to keep it a little bit toned down.

Tony gapes. "Wait, did you...no, couldn't be. Could it?"

Bruce raises his eyebrows.

"Well good for you! And for Clint. I assume it was Clint? I didn't think that was even an option for you."

"It wasn't," Bruce said, trying to look annoyed and failing. "Clint cheats."

"Okay, because for the record, I would definitely hit that, if I didn't think it would hit back so hard I'd land in next Tuesday." Tony pinches Bruce's butt as he walks by, and this time Bruce manages to look slightly disgruntled as he glares after the engineer.

Bruce gets a lot done in the labs that day. He helps Tony get past a couple of issues he's had with the medical nanobots, as well as flying through his own projects, then gets done early and decides to make spicy peanut chicken for everyone for dinner.

Tony is definitely glad that Bruce has managed to find something that makes him this happy, especially after he gets around to tasting the food.


	9. Integrated

Clint rearranges Bruce's left hand on the bow.

"Relax your fingers," he says. "The bow is a living thing and you're going to guide it, not choke it."

Bruce loosens his fingers. He understands that Clint is using his respect for life as a teaching tool.

"Keep your elbow up. The tension starts at the elbow. There should be a straight line from your elbow, through the nock, to the arrowhead." Bruce lifts his elbow during this speech. Clint doesn't say anything more, but runs a finger from Bruce's right elbow down his arm, across his first two fingers, and out along the arrow shaft.

Bruce has never understood what was meant when people said "be the ball," or things like that, not until this moment. Clint's attention and reverence don't change a bit as his fingers move across Bruce's knuckles, past the arrow's nock and on to the shaft. Suddenly Bruce understands that this arrow is now an extension of himself.

"Good," Clint says.

Bruce is too absorbed in the feel of it to really register that Clint reacted to something that had only happened, as far as Bruce could tell, in his own mind.

"So feel that," Clint says. "Relax your wrist." He puts his hands on Bruce's right forearm and hand. "All this is part of the bow and the arrow. Part of that animal. You draw from the elbow. Your wrist is part of the bow. Let the bow pull it straight, line it up with the arrow. You and the bow are a team. You guide it, and it guides you."

Clint is speaking in a low, slightly raspy voice, calming but intense. A small part of Bruce's brain is aware how close he's standing, of all the little touches that go along with his instruction. Most of Bruce's attention is on the bow against his hand, the string behind his fingers and the arrow running between them. 

"All right, now ease the string back and lower your bow."

Bruce does, only now feeling the ache in his shoulders from the unaccustomed effort.

"I don't get to shoot today?" Bruce says, slightly disappointed but chuckling even so.

When he puts the bow down, Bruce can feel his attention being drawn to Clint's proximity and the intense focus the other man has been regarding him with. There's a sudden bubbling of heat and desire and Bruce leans toward Clint without really meaning to.

Clint defuses this by closing his eyes, putting a hand on Bruce's neck and drawing their foreheads together.

"Learning not to shoot is just as important as learning to shoot," Clint says, and his tone has moved from intimate to straightforward, and Bruce can feel his mind starting to click back into place, resuming its busy patterns of abstract thought.

"Holding your stance is important, and so is putting down your bow without firing. You never want to dry fire, because it can damage the bow, so if you lose your arrow somehow you have to be especially careful to ease up slowly."

Bruce's mind takes up the flood of technical details gratefully, and he returns to the familiar state of control through diversion. They put the equipment away and go back to the Avengers common floor, still talking pull weight and its effect on arrow speed, the varying types and materials of bows and arrows, and some of the tech that Tony had promised Clint he was working on.

Bruce makes himself tea and settles into one of the sofas. Clint grabs a soda and perches a few stairs up on the exposed metal staircase. Natasha is already occupying an armchair, and the three of them chat about the advantages and disadvantages of having complex technology integrated into weapons. Bruce is pretty familiar with Tony's suit by now and the stories about its various functions, malfunctions and failures, so he can hold his own in the conversation even without having carried weapons into battle himself. 

Then Steve rushes in.

"Time to suit up," he says. "We've got another Norse god problem."

"Loki escape?" Clint asks, and Bruce can see that he's tensed, waiting for the reply.

"Not as far as we can tell," Steve answers. "Thor's back, but on his own, and for some reason he's smashing up a SHIELD facility. He isn't answering any questions."

"All right," says Clint, jumping up and swinging over the banister and down. "Let's suit up."

All the hesitation is gone. Clint is Clint. Bruce smiles despite the situation, and heads for the jet, no suit necessary.

* * *

The Avengers are on site, and Cap and Tony are already bashing Thor, but the last time they went up against him he was making an effort to be polite. Now Thor seems to be a single-minded force of destruction. They'll need all the help they can get, and Hulk has the best track record with hitting gods hard enough that they stay down for a while.

Bruce feels the dark water inside him. He remembers the bow, the string, the arrow, the arm. He knows that whether or not he is the Hulk, he had better get used to the fact that the Hulk is a part of him. 

He doesn't surrender to the water, this time. He dives in. 

This body is his, and though it's monstrous and green and fueled by rage and fear and passion, maybe if he accepts it, works with it, then it will work with him. Maybe if he allows himself to feel the things it feels, he could expand to fill it.

He opens his eyes, and he can see the world as the Hulk sees it.

Annoying little metal friend. Annoying blue man who likes to give orders. Red-caped god trying to smash them with his annoying hammer Hulk can't lift.

Red-caped god _will stop._

Hulk growls deep in his chest. It feels to Bruce like a mountain, like a continent shaking. There's too much anger, too much outrage, and Bruce wants to close his eyes again, ignore this, deny this, but it's too important. Bruce fights to maintain awareness, to be present in these feelings that are too strong, that he never wanted.

Hulk slams into Thor. Thor springs up again and flies away, ignoring whatever pain the blow may have caused. That had at least made Loki cringe. Hulk gets angrier.

They leap after the god. Bruce tries to suggest capturing rather than hitting. Hulk is too angry to listen, or so Bruce thinks, until Hulk has Thor by the throat, and is peering into the god's blue eyes. He's ready to crush the Asgardian.

_Wait,_ Bruce thinks.

Hulk's hand stills on the god's throat. He's waiting. For Bruce.

There's something important. He can't think in words and numbers when he's here, in the green, but he can think in pictures and simple concepts.

Clint.

Hulk's reply to that is joy, suspicion, emotional eyeroll, impatience.

Blue eyes. Blue, blue eyes. Clint's eyes in the security feed from the Helicarrier. Clint was sick, out of control. Thor is sick.

_He will stop. Make him._ Anger and more impatience punctuate these concepts.

Bruce calls on memories now. When we were out of control, Thor tried to stop us, but also to help. Remember?

Hulk remembers. Remembers the sound of words, and Bruce tells him, yes, those words. 

Hulk says them. "Not your enemy. Try to think."

Not that that had helped when they were out of control, and that thought and the accompanying feeling of frustration seem to come from both of them. Thor looks blankly at Hulk and continues to struggle.

Bruce tries to remember something that might be more useful.

Clint came back. He got better. How? He'd told Bruce... "And she said, 'I hit you really hard in the head.'" That was the key.

Hulk can get on board with this idea. 

He picks up Thor and rams him headfirst into the concrete.

_Wait,_ Bruce urges again. Hulk stands back and waits.

Thor doesn't move for a long moment, and Bruce worries that he's not going to. But finally he shifts, lifting his head, and his eyes are greyish, bewildered, and sorrowful.

"My noble green comrade," he says. "I am sorry for what I have done. I was not myself. Can you understand?"

Hulk nods, turns, and walks away.

* * *

When Hulk shrinks back down into Bruce, intentionally, consciously, and willingly, part of Bruce wants to shout, to grin. There's been more than one victory today.

But Clint walks up to him, eyes wary, and Bruce realizes what this will mean for the archer.

This is not a time for celebration.

"Was that what I think it was?"

He needs to know. Bruce tells him.

"His eyes were too blue."

Bruce knows what these words will do to Clint. Someone has the Tesseract. Someone is taking people again.

Clint, after a nod of acknowledgement, is almost frozen in place. It's so unlike him; the archer is always moving fluidly or waiting calmly. It's painful to watch him now.

Bruce hates this. Why does Clint always know exactly what Bruce needs, and Bruce is just standing here like an idiot, watching as Clint tortures himself? 

There is no science that will let him understand Clint. Clint is unquantifiable, unfathomable, does not adhere to any equation or map to any graph. Bruce...can't truly touch him, not in a meaningful way.

Bruce knows Clint deserves better than him.

For the first time since the quarantine, Bruce considers running.

Then aggravation and exasperation bubble up inside him, and now that the lines of communication are open, he can feel Hulk's concepts along with the emotions; he senses Hulk looking out through his eyes and struggling to understand.

No, that's not quite right. Hulk understands. Hulk struggles to get Bruce to understand.

_Out of the way. Let me._ The Hulk hates Bruce sometimes. Bruce had never really thought about that.

_Show me,_ Bruce answers, and very carefully yields a little, inviting Hulk to use his voice, move his hands. _I'm open to suggestions._

Anger, exasperation, determination, love. He grabs Clint's shoulders and he growls, "Not gonna happen. I won't let it."

Clint looks up in surprise at the tone, at the force in the touch that Bruce never, ever, ever allows himself. There's a spark back in his eyes as he realizes, and he smiles. "Is that the scientist talking, or the monster?" The line of Clint's eyebrows makes this a pleased but pointed smile.

Bruce smiles too, relieved and amazed as the shape of the world shifts around him.

"Is there a difference?" he replies. "He's part of me, after all."


	10. Exchanged

Bruce's hands remain on the archer's shoulders, so he feels it when Clint jumps a little at Tony's voice splitting the air behind him.

"FUCK those twinkle-toed sons of bitches. They do NOT get that close to Pepper _ever again._ I'll rewrite your security protocols, give you control of the suits, the jets, everything and you DON'T let that happen again."

Tony pauses momentarily, breathing hard and apparently listening to Jarvis over his phone. The comm system in the suit must have been taken out by one of those lightning strikes.

"I don't _fucking care_ about that. You have to be Skynet to get it done, I'm damn well going to make you into Skynet. You can't do this, then you're of no use to me. And if people start thinking you're the devil incarnate, heartless overlord, out to destroy us all, well, JOIN THE CLUB!"

Bruce looks to Steve inquiringly.

"This was a distraction. Some kind of force attacked Stark Tower and the Helicarrier while we were here. They called themselves elves."

"What happened to Pepper?"

"She's fine; I'm under the impression she took out a couple of them personally with a flamethrower. She shouldn't have had to, though. She's not a soldier. We should have been ready." Steve's face is stricken, eyes still on Tony, who's now got his face in his armored hands.

Bruce nods. The Avengers have long ago stopped trying to convince each other that mistakes are acceptable, because when it's life and death, the Avengers all know they aren't.

"Drow," Thor says when he sees the footage. "Most likely Malekith. I must return to Asgard and warn my father that Svartalfheim is moving against Midgard, and so against us."

Thor assures them that once the might of Asgard is rallied, the elf king will be dealt with. Even so, the Avengers remain on high alert, gathered in the common floors more often than not. When she's not working Pepper joins them, and generally either Steve, Tony or both are hovering near her. Tony's developed a nervous gesture where he touches his wrists to make sure the bracelets are there. Steve keeps his shield propped in the corner of the kitchen. Tasha and Clint are in the shooting ranges when they're not here, and Tony and Bruce take turns distracting each other with science when they're not hovering over their charges.

Scratch that, Bruce isn't hovering over Clint at all. Nope.

He's just really interested in his new archery lessons.

* * *

Bruce lets go.

The bow's strong arms pull the string straight; the string pushes the arrow; the arrow flies.

The arrow hits the blue ring of the target with a quiet but satisfying thud.

Bruce smiles.

Their forms are mirroring each other as they practice side by side, Clint's perfect left handed draw across from Bruce's still slightly clumsy right handed one. Bruce looks over often to remind himself, and if he's having trouble focusing, more often. This is what Clint has trained his body to do for his entire life, and there is an aesthetic perfection in seeing that body fulfill its potential. It's fascinating and sexy, every time.

They go to retrieve their arrows, and Bruce's target is dotted all over with the brown-fletched practice arrows he's been using, but there are quite a few in the top right quadrant near the center, and he's pleased as he pulls the smooth field points easily out of the dense foam target.

Clint's arrows are fletched black, and there's a mixture of standard broadheads and front-weighted practice arrows with the same balance as his specialty arrows.

Clint's arrows are all grouped tightly in the center, but he doesn't look pleased. His forehead wrinkles and he grumbles to himself as he yanks out a broadhead that has landed two inches below center, and the blades catch in the foam.

They've been at this for an hour and a half now, and Bruce's shoulders burn. Another time he'd just stay and continue to watch Clint, but today he says, "I've had enough of this for today. I'd really like to sit down, watch a movie and drink tea."

Clint looks up at Bruce, then down at his bow, frowning. He takes a breath.

"You're right, that's enough for today," he says, and very deliberately unstrings his bow.

* * *

Clint likes movies that are fast-paced, action, thrillers and horror. Bruce likes movies that are clever and have complex plots. They've found films where the Venn diagram intersects - The Sixth Sense, Inside Man, The Thomas Crown Affair, V for Vendetta. Today they settle on Bulletproof Monk.

The others are gathered in the main common room, and when they see Clint and Bruce heading up the stairs to the game room, they wave greetings but give the new couple their space.

On the way through the kitchen, Bruce makes himself chai in a travel mug with a silicone grip, and he wraps his hands around the hot mug as he sits. He contemplates Clint as the archer tries not to pace, and ends up standing and stretching instead.

Bruce consults Hulk. Then, "Sit already," he growls.

"All right, all right," Clint says, flopping down next to Bruce on the couch. "The big guy impatient to see some martial arts mayhem? I always suspected he agrees with me about movies."

"Something like that," agrees Bruce, then puts down his tea and wraps his hot hands around Clint's head, fingers pressing on his temples and thumbs massaging at his neck. Clint makes a surprised, slightly strangled noise which turns into a long sigh, and goes limp, leaning back into Bruce.

"I'm not sure what just happened, but I like it," he murmurs.

"Tea has many uses," Bruce replies with a quiet smile.

"I'm beginning to see the advantages." Clint almost purrs as the unnaturally warm fingers continue to massage his scalp. "But what did I say about the hair?"

Bruce chuckles. "You push all of my limits; I think it's only fair that I push a couple of yours."

"Yeah, I think I could live with that." Clint smiles lazily. "Jarvis, start the movie for us?"

"Certainly, Sir," the voice overhead answers, and in a few minutes the promised martial arts mayhem has begun.

Bruce drinks his tea, pays careful attention to the wording of the prophecy, and continues to watch Clint, as the other man leans against his shoulder.

Clint is relaxing and enjoying himself, laughing and picking apart the combat styles. They both laugh at the various culture clash moments.

Bruce is starting to believe that he might have something to offer in life other than his brain and his brawn. That maybe his heart is worth something to somebody too.

* * *

The movie winds down to its inevitable sweet romantic conclusion. It doesn't bother Bruce as much as it often does, and in fact today he finds himself inspired.

Bruce kisses Clint, solidly, deeply, daring to express some portion of what he's feeling.

"You good there?" Clint asks when they come up for air.

"Let me keep track of the Hulk for a while," Bruce says.

Clint smiles, a bit smugly. "About time; I can't always do your job for you."

Bruce feels Clint settle back into the sofa, relaxed, and hears the silent 'I trust you' in the lighthearted words.

The feelings surge again, but they're not threatening to overwhelm his form, perhaps because he's giving them action instead, kissing Clint again with a force that surprises and pleases the archer, if the noises he's making are any indication.

A moment later Clint chuckles. "You think maybe it's time to move somewhere that isn't a common area? I don't have that much problem with accidentally giving someone a show, but somehow you don't seem like the type...."

Bruce draws back a bit, smiles, and closes his eyes, giving himself space to reestablish control without losing the mood. A moment later he opens his eyes again, and they both stand and head for the elevator, where, once they've chosen Bruce's floor and the doors have closed, they wrap around each other again.

When they get to the room, they shed their shirts and Bruce pulls Clint down onto the bed on top of him. Bruce lets his hands move across Clint's back, lets his fingers dig into the muscles, lets his arms pull the archer close and his tongue penetrate Clint's mouth.

He's communing with the Hulk still, passing on concepts about strength and safety, giving over a little control in trade for an acknowledgement of how important the remaining control is.

Clint is sucking on Bruce's tongue, and Bruce is flying, losing himself under the water. He catches himself and looks at the clock - 4:48 (four hundred and forty eight factors to two, two, two, two, two, two and seven), and he manages to still his mind without more than a tiny hitch from his body.

Once he's confident in his control again, he turns his mind to the undoing of pants fasteners, buttons and zippers coming apart with a few precise, efficient motions. Clint rolls off of him for a moment while they both shed the last of their clothing, and then he's back, and sensitive skin is rubbing together, and Clint's hand reaches down to cup both of them.

Bruce fights not to panic, not to call a halt.

He breathes, and settles into the new sensations. It's still almost too much.

He's hanging, floating, without direction or meaning except _Clint,_ and the Hulk is there behind his eyes, and they're moving Bruce's hands together in perfect agreement, moving his hips, moving his mouth, and Bruce tells the Hulk to hold here, to wait, and the Hulk pushes back, _if you tell him._

He's floating, rising up on the crest of an unbroken swell; there's power here but it's not dragging him under. He's moving with it, not fighting it, and he does what it's urging him to - he lifts his head, lips brushing Clint's cheek, and he gasps, "I love you."

Clint's breath catches, and a moment later he kisses Bruce hard, letting his fingers tighten, and it's all the answer he needs, all of anything he needs because everything else disappears, overshadowed by sensation. He's present for every blindingly bright moment of it this time, and he realizes this is what the Hulk's given him in trade. He's sharply aware of every impulse in every nerve and he's grateful for it and he doubts it will ever happen again.

Bruce pushes back into Clint's mouth with his tongue as the archer's climax follows his own, and he feels the vibrations of a stifled cry, the puffs of air from the quick, shallow little breaths. He closes his arms around Clint's suddenly limp, boneless form, cradling him.

Clint's eyes are closed, his face relaxed except for the barest hint of a smile. Bruce blinks slowly, watching, fingertips scrabbling gently in the short hair behind Clint's ear.

He loves this man.

All the parts of the complex, dangerous being that is Bruce Banner and the Hulk - all of him loves this man.

And he will do anything to keep Clint safe and whole.


	11. Held

Of course the one they get to first is Natasha.

Clint catches a glimpse of her face with those too-blue eyes, and his first thought is _Wake up, wake up, wake up...._

But this isn't a nightmare, he realizes as his body reacts quickly, automatically to the threat, as Loki is nowhere in sight, nor does his laughter echo through the tower. This is not his nightmare.

This is worse.

This is real.

They struggle briefly but then they both have guns on each other and Clint knows he won't shoot and he isn't sure that Tasha won't. He knows how impossible it is to get out from under orders when they've been phrased properly and if this is Loki, he will know by now to say "kill" if he wants someone killed.

But then, he isn't dead yet.

Clint drops his gun and raises his hands.

* * *

THUD.

And all the lights go out.

"What the hell, Jarvis?" Tony yelps.

There's no response.

"Shit."

Cap grabs his shield. Tony presses a button on his bracelets. Nothing happens.

"DAMN. Transistors are shot. Thought I had them hardened properly."

Pepper looks at him with wide eyes. "What, you mean they're not working?"

Bruce freezes and takes stock of things. This is the tower. No enemy in sight. Nothing to smash. He had better stay in control of himself in case his knowledge proves more useful than his muscle.

_Let the string slide back into place. Your bow is ready and waiting when it's needed, but there's no call to waste your strength maintaining that tension._

Bruce sets himself to observe, process, and support.

 _Where is Clint?_ Hulk asks.

Bruce and Tony had been debating the merits of different polymers for use in smart bandages and other high-tech first aid supplies when Clint and Natasha had gone down to the shooting range. Bruce has no interest in guns, but Clint wanted to keep in practice with all his weapons, so Bruce had let them go.

 _Clint is armed and with Natasha,_ he tells Hulk. He pushes aside further worry by turning his mind to observation. 

There's no light from any electronics.

"EMP?" he asks Tony. He knows the effects of an atmospheric gamma burst on electronics, even if it was not his area of expertise on the gamma bomb project.

"Looks like." Tony makes a noise of aggravation. 

"Answer me, Tony. Why isn't the suit working?" Pepper says, hysteria starting in her voice.

"My suits might be working, but the bracelets aren't. Neither are Jarvis's ears in the tower. No way to call the suit. I'd go and get it but I can't be sure it is working, and..." Tony blinks and rubs at his temples. "Hate to admit it but it's probably safer for everyone if I hide behind the super soldier for now. Take away the suit, what am I? Are you happy now, Rogers? You're the big man in the room."

"There isn't anything about this situation that makes me happy," Steve says, jaw tightening. His glance falls to Pepper, and Tony's eyes follow.

"God, it made me crazy when I heard about you fighting off those drow with a flamethrower. I understand now why you broke things off, Pep. I can't take this either."

"It's too late; I worry, all the time. _God,_ Tony, _why?_ Why does all this happen to you, and why can't I ever get _away_ from it?" Pepper puts her hands over her face and sort of sinks down in her seat. " _Damn_ it!"

"We need to keep it together," Steve insists, but he looks as spooked as the rest of them. When did Captain America start getting spooked by things?

There's something odd going on here. They're all falling apart, wearing at the seams. Reminds Bruce of the Helicarrier, of picking up that damn staff. 

Emotions are being stirred up. But it's more than last time, more intense, more destructive. He's more aware of the Hulk inside him now and he can feel it.

Hulk is confused, can't talk, can't understand. Hulk is so angry; Hulk is hammering away at his insides, roaring to be let out, to destroy, but Bruce breathes and thinks this out. 

Soon someone will arrive to take advantage of the mess they've created.

This proves correct. A villain strides in, and damn, do they all practice the walk because it's distinctive. This one's blue and black with pointed ears, but the walk and the staff are so much like Loki's that Bruce is having flashbacks. Maybe it's all the leather. You must have to walk slowly, wearing all that.

"I am Malekith, King of Svartalfheim, and you Avengers will soon be my slaves."

Bruce doesn't think Hulk would be all that useful right now, and he doesn't have any sort of plan yet, so he stands there watching, rubbing one hand with the other like he does sometimes to keep focus on sensory observation. Tony and Pepper are...ah...making out on the couch. Only Cap is still well enough on top of things to put up any kind of visible resistance. He throws his shield.

Malekith moves shockingly quickly (so much for the leather theory), dodging and pressing the staff to the Captain's chest.

Steve's eyes are now a uniform, unnatural blue.

The elf smiles.

"None of the rest of you can stand up against this spell, I think. You are all too full of your own worst nightmares."

Bruce doesn't believe he should disabuse the villain of this notion, so he keeps silent, and it isn't like he has to fake inner turmoil. It's a war in here.

"Emotions," the elf says. "Such a powerful force. Loki underestimated the potential of the Tesseract in this area, I think. But then again, drow magic is likely superior to his in this area. The fey have always had a talent for not only chaos, but _passion._ "

Bruce looks over to see Clint and Natasha moving into the room from the direction of the stairwell. Natasha's eyes are bright azure blue and Clint's face....

Clint's face is so bleak, beyond frightened and into damaged.

The moment stretches out, almost too long.

51864.

(Fifty-one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-four factors to two, two, two, three, and two thousand one hundred and sixty-one.)

Hulk is past trying to urge Bruce to do something, to let Hulk free, and is now simply blind rage, filling Bruce's chest to the point of bursting. Bruce knows he's never been able to push back against the Hulk when he's this far gone, so instead of pushing back, Bruce lets it be what it is and continues to think.

"My dear Black Widow," Malekith says, seeing her approach. "Well done. Now come to me, lovely thing."

Natasha wraps herself around the elf king, and they kiss, wild and rough.

Bruce grabs Clint's shoulder and pulls him around, stopping him from watching. He can see in Clint's eyes that this is just about too much and if the archer breaks, Hulk is as good as free and if Malekith can turn Hulk, they're all of them done for.

He bends over Clint, squeezing his shoulder quickly and reassuringly; he speaks quietly but commandingly into the archer's ear.

"Run. We have to run."

He grabs Clint and they run for the stairwell while Malekith and Widow are occupied.

Maybe it's because Malekith's spell calls only to emotion, but Bruce's mind doesn't feel affected by it. The Hulk is roaring loud enough Bruce doesn't know how everyone isn't hearing it. But Bruce has calm, his body, and his mind.

As they find their way down to the workshop, Bruce thanks his lucky stars that he and Tony had been playing in the Faraday cage the day before. There's most of a disassembled suit in there and Bruce knows enough to put an arc reactor into the socket. He crosses his fingers and smiles when its eyes start to glow.

Bruce taps on the helmet. "Jarvis, are you there? Do you have that independent control of the suits Tony was planning?"

"Yes, Doctor Banner. I take it my services as iron man are required?"

Bruce hadn't known that the AI had the ability to sound that grim.

He speaks to Jarvis as he puts the pieces of the suit together and watches them link together and power up. "Tony's alive, just out of the game for the moment, and EMP has taken out your tower hardware. It's Malekith, personally this time, and I think he's brought the Tesseract."

"Understood, Sir," says Jarvis from the suit, and the whole assemblage of parts springs up and launches itself out the door of the cage. It would be disconcerting as hell if he wasn't too full of rage too feel anything that subtle.

Bruce walks out of the cage and moves his mental focus to the next task.

Clint is crouched outside, face in his arms, muttering to himself. Bruce sits down on the floor next to him and listens. 

"Can't depend on anything; on anyone. Anyone can be compromised." Clint flinches slightly. "Everyone gets broken eventually. Everyone fails. Why should I fight, what good will it do?"

Bruce doesn't have the Hulk to call on for help now, but what he does have is a sort of map of what he has done at different times that seems to have yielded desirable results with Clint.

He takes Clint's hand in his and intertwines their fingers, squeezing lightly.

"I can't promise I'll always be here for you, because we both know that, yes, things happen and people fail. But I'm here now. I'm here through this. Hold on to me."

Clint frowns.

"I know there are crap lives and there are better places you can get to in life. But none of it lasts. Used to think I'd gotten out of that hole; used to think I had made it. I was perfect at something. Perfect marksman. Well what is that to be proud of when you can't control who it gets used against?"

The archer shakes his head.

"I used to know what I needed and what I could let go of. But the things I thought I needed, they're gone now. I don't know anymore. I don't know if it's worth fighting, if everything I choose to fight for is just going to break."

Bruce takes a breath and gives this his best shot.

"There are some things you hold on to, and some things you let go of, but sometimes it takes another person's perspective to find out which is which. You taught me that. You taught me that _this_ is something worth holding on to."

Bruce grips Clint's shoulders hard.

"Hold on to me. I can take it. I'm strong."

And then Clint is curled against him, crying, which is bizarre on some level, but then again, alien magic. What illusion of normality can you keep in the face of that?

After a while Clint quiets, and then straightens up again so that they're sitting side by side, but with shoulders pressed together. Then the suit shows up, and it's got Tony in it, come to tell them the Tesseract is in Avengers custody again (and this time they're keeping it), and Tony sounds the all clear.

At some point around this time, Bruce realizes that Hulk isn't speaking to him. Hulk is conscious enough to realize that Clint is safe, and so isn't trying to force his way out any more, but Hulk is not a creature of reason by nature, and isn't able to absorb the fact that Bruce staying in control was what saved everyone.

Hulk's like an animal, and there's nothing wrong with that. But animals don't take kindly to being caged when they're confused or distressed.

Bruce realizes that after this, he'll have to regain Hulk's trust all over again.


	12. Strung

Bruce and Hulk don't get along for a while after that, but it's no worse than it has been after some of the more disastrous experiments in pursuit of a cure. It's a familiar enough feeling, this wordless, conceptless rumble of unhappiness, of discontent. And now Bruce has new tools that allow him to keep better control under more circumstances; even if Hulk trusts him less, Bruce trusts himself more. Overall, that's a tremendous gain.

It's mostly discouraging because of what they almost had.

A dialogue.

That would be something with unimaginable value - to talk, negotiate, communicate with the Hulk. Bruce wonders for a while if this is going to be his new _cure_ , the thing he chases after while forgetting to live the life he has.

But Clint doesn't let that happen.

Clint pokes him until he goes out, to eat with the others, to play games, or sometimes just to sit on the roof and feed the pigeons. Clint comes into the lab, mentions archery practice, and winks, and often Bruce will follow, to practice or just watch, depending on his mood. And when all else fails, an unexpected kiss will still derail the momentous freight train of Bruce's thoughts.

And apparently Hulk still trusts Clint, because there are a few minor bumps in the road but overall, nothing disastrous happens when Bruce feels comfortable enough to continue their nightly experiments.

Some nights Hulk lies close to the surface. Clint is focused, on these nights, every motion deliberate and slow. He holds Bruce's face in his hands as he kisses him, keeping the distance constant and the pressure minimal. Their lips touch, grasp, intermingle, tug, slide, embrace; but there is no force in the kiss.

Bruce wants to jump out of his skin; he wants to flip them over and crush Clint's beautiful body under his, put his tongue down Clint's throat, fuck him hard. But Bruce stays glued to the bed, filled with the terrible wonderful heat, gasping and squirming under his lover. 

"Clint, please," he says, and his voice is the only thing he's not keeping a tight hold on. He'll say anything in a moment like this. "More, please, I need you."

They don't ever talk about this, about how very fucked up they both are, that Clint loves to walk this edge and see how much tension he can master, can hold in its place with his hands. This is trust; Bruce trusts Clint to play this dangerous game; he trusts Clint enough to show him this tension that seethes under his skin, that no one else gets to see.

Clint respects that tension, but is not afraid of it; he takes hold of it, draws it out, aims and looses it.

When that's left Bruce spent and drowsy, then he can have everything he wants - to wrap himself around Clint, press his fingers into the beautiful muscles, kiss him deeply, give him what he needs in return.

Other nights are like tonight, and they're more and more common.

Bruce always does his yoga meditation and visualization, but tonight it's working better than usual. He breathes, imagining the skin all over his body becoming softer, the muscles more lax, the bones heavier. He imagines each bone sinking through his flesh and into the bed, then floating off, independently of the others. He imagines his breathing in filling him with light, and his breathing out carrying away his tension and anger.

When he's nearly asleep, Clint prods him gently, telling him to roll over. Bruce obeys, and he's rewarded by strong hands kneading and rubbing away the tension remaining in his muscles, in his neck, under his shoulder blades, down his sides and spine. The fingers push and slide, filling Bruce with a content warmth everywhere they touch. The Other Guy is deep and dormant inside him, anger subsided to annoyance like a lion's roar become a kitten's purr.

This is another thing they don't talk about; how they like the warm, normal, comforting things when they can get them. How Clint would give anything to make Bruce happy. Bruce has tried to argue, to give more than a simple murmured "thank you" but Clint always shushes him. Bruce has learned to accept being taken care of out of necessity - he needs this, the peace, the lack of demands, the careful measure Clint takes before every touch. 

On these nights all Bruce needs to keep him flat on that bed is gravity, pulling drowsily at his limbs. There isn't much said but there's so much in the way Clint touches Bruce, always careful, always reverent, but confident, sure, solid. And every twitch, every sound that Bruce makes, Clint watches, notes and responds.

Tonight Clint fucks Bruce, deliciously slowly. Bruce's entire body seems saturated with lazy pleasure, and all he does is soak in more and more of it, more than he believed he could hold.

Bruce's eyes are closed and the side of his face lies against the pillow. Clint's teeth and tongue are on the back of his neck now, warmly enveloping, gently pressing, slowly moving against him. One of Clint's hands is wrapped around beneath Bruce, against his stomach at the moment. This is all part of the warm haze of pleasurable things that are happening to Bruce. But mostly Bruce feels Clint inside of him, a slow and steadily rhythmic movement that is everything, that fills him until his every nerve is singing. 

Clint's mouth moves to press kisses to Bruce's shoulder, some only lips, some with the sucking of tongue and the delicate scrape of teeth. The focus and intensity of it make Bruce feel wanted, valuable, as Clint seems to savor every inch of his skin.

Clint slides in again, the hand on Bruce's stomach tightening, sliding lower, as if to draw them even closer together, and Bruce gasps as fingers brush even more sensitive skin; everything is coming together, the warmth and pliability painstakingly pressed into every one of his muscles, the hungry kisses along his back, Clint hard and steady inside him, and now fingers moving across and taking hold of his own erection - everything, everything is warmth and fullness and wonder and sensation. Bruce can't help but tense a bit now, legs pressing into the bed, eyes opening wide, all of him feeling as if he's coming alive, being pulled into exquisite shapes, like a bow bending under tension.

Clint's hand moves against him, and speed and friction increase elsewhere as well, and Bruce breathes in as if he has never tasted air in his life, and every muscle tenses fractionally as the universe turns itself inside out in ecstasy. Light consumes his sight and time breathes, expanding and contracting, and Bruce wonders if this is what it's like to be relativity.

Clint moans at the feeling of Bruce tightening around him, and wraps his arms around Bruce, holding tightly as he nears his own climax. Bruce is gradually melting back into the bed as the hot pool of satisfaction spreads from his stomach, out into his whole body, and he savors Clint's last few thrusts through the haze, along with the panting breaths that accompany them, as signs that Clint is enjoying this thoroughly as well.

They move against each other for a few more time-stretching moments, then still.

Peace creeps in, breathing deepens and slows, and Bruce finds himself more than half asleep despite the solid weight of Clint on top of him. He smiles lazily, not really minding, but eventually regains the motivation to prod Clint with an elbow until he stirs and rolls off. Bruce turns just enough to place a kiss on Clint's shoulder, then drifts to sleep, too sated to care about the mess.

The next time he drifts to awareness he's been cleaned up and covered with blankets, and there's the sound of a shower from nearby. Bruce feels briefly guilty, then decides it's not worthwhile and lets sleep have him again.

* * *

Bruce wakes up to see Clint has been watching him, and the sharp, patient eyes crinkle as they catch his own. Bruce shifts, stretches a little and watches right back. They quietly drink each other in until something on Bruce's face causes Clint to frown a bit and say, "You just started thinking. Too early for that. Cut it out."

"Nope. Can't," Bruce replies good-humoredly.

"Then tell me what's going on in there."

Bruce frowns ever so slightly, almost more wistful than anything else. 

"You do too much for me," he says. "You don't need to be so perfect."

"Yes I do," the archer replies, and though his tone is light as always, Bruce can tell he's dead serious. "Because now that I have this I'm not ever going to let it go."

Bruce smiles, running an appreciative thumb over the muscles of the archer's arm. 

"That's good to know," he says.

Clint rolls a little, leaning over Bruce, playing with his messy brown hair and wearing a soft smile. "Yeah? You like being the one thing I don't want to live without?"

Bruce closes his eyes, savoring the feeling of closeness he gets from these words and these touches.

"Yeah," he agrees, moving his hands to Clint's back, less an embrace and more a reminder, a reassurance that the man beside him is real and isn't going to disappear in the morning sun like a mist.

"Because you love me?" Clint half-whispers, in a voice part cocky, part wondering and in awe of what he's got. There's a smile in that voice so wide Bruce can see it with his eyes still closed. 

"Because I love you," Bruce says, opening his eyes, one hand moving up to scrabble in the short hairs at the back of Clint's head. "And because Hulk trusts you, and if we lost you I don't know what we'd do."

Bruce watches Clint's eyes carefully for any sign that his words are giving the archer second thoughts. They widen slightly, but then begin to shine, and Clint's smile only widens.

Then he brings his lips down to Bruce's ear, nose burying itself in the wild brown hair, and he whispers, "Love you too, Bruce. Love both of you."

Something uncurls inside of Bruce, and he smiles, and he can feel the Hulk smiling along with him. Tentatively he gives way, and Hulk moves his arms, tightening them around Clint, just enough to claim and to comfort. 

For the first time he can remember, Bruce feels nothing but joy. 

He relaxes further into the moment, tightening his hold around Clint just a fraction more on behalf of himself, breathing in the scent of the archer and rubbing his stubbly cheek against the other's. 

Clint, who had been playing with Bruce's hair, pauses, looks up and says, " _Something_ just changed."

"Hulk's decided he's talking to me again," Bruce admits. "Guess he thinks if _you_ love me, I can't be _that_ bad."

Clint beams at him. "That's right, Big Guy. Our Bruce is worth all the trouble he puts us through." Clint's hand moves down out of Bruce's hair to cup his cheek, and he kisses Bruce, just a bit deeper than usual, knowing, sensing, that the Hulk is not about to interfere. 

The sense of accord is back, and Bruce returns the kiss wholeheartedly, happy, full of emotion, and at peace.

 

 


End file.
